Organic advantage in Scotland with DK Excited for OSR production
Posted 6 years ago
18/08/2020
DK Excited is showing ‘massive potential’ for organic OSR production, yielding 0.5t/ha more than one of the top UK Recommended TuYV-resistant hybrids in field-scale Scottish farm trial work overseen by independent agronomist, Andy Cheetham.
At the current organic rapeseed price of £900/t, he calculates its average of 2.94t/ha at an input cost of £185/ha gives a gross margin of £2461/ha.
As well as turnip yellows virus and pod shatter resistance which Mr Cheetham considers essential for organic regimes, DK Excited proved markedly more resistant to light leaf spot in practice than the leading RL hybrid grown alongside it.
Add its double phoma resistance and ultra-rapid autumn development – especially important in dealing with weeds – and he believes the all-round strength of the variety makes it especially well-suited to organic production.
“As we learn more about growing OSR organically and fine-tune our agronomy to make the most of it, I’m convinced we can get very much more out of DK Excited, in particular,” he stresses. “It was much bigger-stemmed, more robust, and better branched and podded than its RL rival. It has massive potential.”