Disease driving wheat variety decisions

Looking at the UKFM Group 1 milling winter wheat sector as an example, Mr Bull says he can foresee an evolution taking place over coming seasons, with growers moving to newer varieties offering a more balanced disease resistance profile.

“This could include improved resistance against rusts,” says Mr Bull, “but also potentially fusarium, which is of greater importance in quality crops. Remember also that rusts can affect quality as well as yield.

“For the last seven or eight years, the UKFM Group 1 milling winter wheat variety market has been relatively static. But in the last year or so we’ve had two new Group 1 varieties come onto the AHDB winter wheat Recommended List (RL), the first of these being SY Cheer.

“SY Cheer has delivered consistent yields over the last four seasons, with no major weaknesses to the common foliar wheat diseases, including plugging an important rust gap.

“In recent seasons we’ve seen a fairly sharp decline in market share of true Group 1 varieties. But with these newer Group 1 varieties, we could see a revival of interest in growing top quality milling wheats, after a number of farmers had previously stopped growing milling wheat after finding it increasingly difficult to manage.”

“Greater security”

As well as disease resistance, Mr Bull says grain quality is also, of course, crucial with milling wheat. So, with some challenging harvests over recent years and weather extremes becoming the norm, it is important that new varieties have a level of in-built grain quality resilience, he points out.

“Although the 2022 harvest was hot and dry, and the UK was able to produce some good quality milling wheat, summer 2023 in particular, and summer 2024 in some locations, saw wetter conditions and delayed harvests,” says Mr Bull. “This led to grain sprouting in ears and reduced Hagbergs.

“Poor Hagbergs are a non-starter when trying to sell milling wheat. So varieties with an inherently high Hagberg offer growers potentially greater security.

“As well as its capacity to assimilate high levels of protein in the grain, SY Cheer also has the highest Hagberg Falling Number figure among UKFM Group 1 varieties on the 2025/26 AHDB winter wheat RL, at 299, and the highest specific weight figure, at 79.8kg/hl.

“There’s a stable demand for bread-making wheat from UK millers, and SY Cheer has support from major millers in the UK.

“Overall, it’s good to have new variety genetics in the milling wheat market. In many cases, milling wheat growers often choose to grow more than one milling variety. My suggestion going forward would be to continue to do this – growing a selection of these newer varieties, so you don’t have all your eggs in one basket.”

Feed wheat

Turning to the feed wheat sector, Mr Bull believes that here, too, spreading risk by growing a selection of varieties is important – including growing a “banker” wheat variety with a known track record as part of the farm’s variety portfolio.

Mr Bull says: “A good example of a banker variety is Graham. It also has a nicely balanced disease resistance profile and growers keep coming back to it as a variety they can rely on, because of its consistent performance year after year.

“Despite a number of newer varieties having come on to the market since Graham was launched, it’s still holding its own. In the high disease pressure 2024 season, it yielded more than 107% of the control varieties on the AHDB RL.

“As well as its robust agronomics, in terms of good Septoria tritici resistance and straw stiffness, it is also early maturing. That’s a big bonus in helping to spread harvest workloads within the variety mix on the farm at the end of the season.”

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