Visitors to Elsoms stand at Cereals 2016 will have the opportunity to talk to the Elsoms team of plant breeders and product specialists about the broad range of new varieties now coming onto the market, many of which are also being demonstrated at the show. Wheat Breeder, Stephen Smith will be available to discuss the four new candidate feed wheats from the Elsoms Wheat breeding programme. Oilseeds Breeder, Mark Nightingale will be keen to talk about Oilseed varieties Elgar and Skye. Saaten Union Technical Director, Dr Richard Jennaway will be on hand to provide detailed information on the range of new spring malting barley, spring oats and newly recommended Belgrade wheat. Energy Crop specialist, Heather Ayre will be available to discuss the options for developing an efficient energy crop rotation using hybrid rye, triticale, maize, energy beet and catch and cover crops to. Specialist information on the potential provided by Saaten Union’s Hybrid Wheat portfolio will be available from CROPCO’s John Poulton.

 

“Over recent years farmers have seen a steady reduction in the number of significant suppliers of new products and varieties to the market. Elsoms strategy of co-operating with similar innovative, independent, specialist and technically strong businesses across Europe means that we have been able to reverse this trend by providing a portfolio of impressive arable varieties that is now attracting strong interest from across the industry,” said Adrian Hayler, Head of Elsoms Agricultural Division.

“The strength of the Elsoms programme is underlined by the portfolio of wheat varieties being showcased at Cereals” said Adrian, “which includes four AHDB candidate wheats, Bennington, Moulton, Freiston and Dunston, new early maturing & high yielding AHDB recommended variety Belgrade, specialist alternative milling wheat Lennox as well as Hybrid Wheat’s Hybery and Hylux.”

“The launch of Trinity Oilseed rape three years ago heralded the resurgence of our Agricultural Business,” commented Elsoms, Mark Nightingale.” Trinity has proved to be very popular with growers and we have already had huge demand for our newly recommended variety, Elgar, which is now top of the AHDB E/W Recommended list with the highest gross output and an impressive agronomic and disease resistance package,” he explained. “Alongside Elgar, candidate variety Skye has a similarly impressive output, earliness, agronomy and disease scores and has also been attracting a lot of attention with the variety being chosen by United Oilseeds as a new variety for 2016.”

Elsoms are demonstrating new AHBD candidate varieties of Spring Oats and Spring Malting Barley at Cereals this year. “Acorn spring barley has demonstrated impressive malting potential combined with excellent disease resistance, whilst Chanson is a new null lox variety that provides growers with a real leap forward in terms of yield,” said Elsoms Seed Sales Specialist, George Goodwin. “Both oat varieties, Harmony and Yukon look promising and have attracted promising interest from merchants,” he concluded.

The rapid growth of the energy crop sector over the last three years has driven one of the biggest changes in Arable Cropping since the expansion of the OSR market in in the 1990’s. Elsoms Energy Crop team of Heather Ayre and Jonathan Baxendale, in combination with Saaten Union’s Bio Energy Division lead by Dr Joachim Moeser, have worked closely with energy companies, merchants, famers, advisors and contractors to help develop the most efficient way of producing crops for Energy production. “Whilst Maize rightly remains the foundation of most Energy Crop programmes, many farmers are realising the considerable benefits that can be achieved by a sophisticated and integrated rotation that includes , hybrid rye, triticale, energy beet and catch and cover crops as well as maize,” commented Heather.

“We have been delighted by the support we have received from across the agricultural sector as our Arable Business has grown over the last few years and are now proud that we can offer UK farmers are real alternative choice of a wide range of competitive varieties,” commented Adrian. “For the last three years our Coffee, provided by Stokes of Lincoln has been regarded as the best available at the event and we are pleased to say that we have persuaded them to venture down to Cambridgeshire to support us again,” he added.