Farm trialling helps hybrid choice in Oxfordshire

DK Excited stands out as the top performing of the hybrid varieties James Price has been evaluating at scale alongside his main TuYV-resistant conventional OSR crop at Perdsiwell Farm, Woodstock on the edge of the Cotswolds.

In a much better oilseed rape season, the main 34ha trial field on his thin brash land matched this year’s farm average of 3.9t/ha – encouragingly up from just over 3t/ha in 2021.

Two hectare strips of four hybrids, including the current RL leader, were direct drilled into spring barley stubble in the last week of August, with digestate applied shortly afterwards. All established well with little CSFB damage, and profited from the conditions to come to harvest in good shape.

The main field hybrid strips averaged 4.28t/ha with DK Excited doing 4.59t/ha, substantially outperforming both the RL leader and the field average.

Interestingly too, a second, much smaller field of the farm’s current conventional OSR treated exactly the same but sown 10 days later and after the digestate application did even better than this at 4.7t/ha and outperformed another trial hybrid included in it.

“As we are expanding the area of OSR we have planned for the coming season to just under 400ha across the three farms we manage, we wanted to balance our conventional crop with a strong hybrid to spread the risk,” James explains. “Trialling five possible options under our own conditions and management at Perdiswell has been hugely informative.

“As a result, DK Excited is very much our front runner. As well as averaging almost 0.25t/ha more than any of the other hybrids, it carries the TuYV resistance we want together with pod shatter resistance for valuable extra harvesting flexibility.

“A good early barley harvest this time round gives us the opportunity to drill as soon as we are confident of enough moisture. Knowing how well later-drilled crops continue to do here, though, we won’t be in any rush as our ground a really good soaking to be ready.”