After its debut in 2020, Frontier Agriculture is once again inviting growers to join a virtual tour of one of its 3D Thinking variety trial sites. Charlotte Cunningham reports.

Across the 15 new videos, seed business development manager, Jim Knight, national origination manager, Andrew Hill and regional seed manager, Chris Piggott walk viewers through the winter barley, winter wheat and oilseed rape variety trials at the business’ Bleasby demonstration site.

While Jim and Chris talk through some of the key varieties and considerations for the coming season, Andrew remarks on market outlooks and highlights some exciting opportunities for UK growers.

“It’s been an eventful season and with harvest now upon us, variety choice for next year is top of the agenda for UK farmers,” explains head of Frontier technical services and SOYL, James Moldon.

“While the easing of some restrictions has meant we’ve been able to hold some local trial site tours this year, we’ve always restricted the number of attendees to ensure everyone’s safety. We were of course thrilled to have growers back in the field, but we also know that attending an event isn’t always possible and there are many people who still aren’t comfortable doing so at the moment.

“It’s important that we make our advice and recommendations as accessible as possible,” continues James. “We hope that this new series of videos will prove a useful aid to growers who are considering their variety choices for the new season. During such a busy time of the year, the playlist means they can still get the same guidance from our experts but in a way that is much more flexible.”

New topics for 2021

Once again, Jim, Andrew and Chris talk through some key varieties for wheat and barley, but new for this year is the inclusion of oilseed rape and an introduction to the demonstration site’s ‘disease nursery’ – a specialist trial made up of old, current and new variety ‘tussocks’ which allow for close disease monitoring.

Highlights also include an in-depth review of wheat varieties LG Prince, KWS Cranium, KWS Dawsum and Europe’s first BYDV (barley yellow dwarf virus) resistant wheat, RGT Wolverine. Alongside a wider barley overview, viewers can also see close analyses of varieties SY Kingston, SY Thunderbolt (the Bleasby site’s highest yielding barley variety) and KWS Tardis.

For oilseed rape, variety recommendations are covered for double-low, high erucic acid rape (HEAR) and high oleic and linolenic rape (HOLL) this year. Andrew also evaluates UK crush demand and the opportunities available to growers who are looking to increase the amount of OSR they grow or add it back into the rotation.

Additional insight from the 2021 MyVarieties Seed catalogue

Alongside the new demonstration videos, viewers can find further information about the varieties that are covered in Frontier’s latest MyVarieties Seed catalogue.

Available online as an interactive document, the catalogue contains comprehensive detail for 44 varieties as well as information on drilling, establishment, seed treatments and quality standards.

“There are some exciting developments when it comes to variety choice for next year, including several new products which is great news for growers,” says Jim.

“We’ve seen five new varieties added to the Recommended List for the biscuit market and RGT Wolverine is really causing a stir too. As Europe’s first BYDV resistant wheat, it is one of the most significant developments in UK plant breeding within the last twenty years. Growers now have the option to bring its genetic resistance to the rotation and at a time when aphid pressure appears to be increasing, that is huge.”

Growers can access Frontier’s virtual plot tour series as a playlist on YouTube. While the videos are freely available to anyone, those with a YouTube account can save the playlist to their own library and subscribers to the channel can be notified as further videos are uploaded.

For growers who watch the series in its entirety, there is also the opportunity to claim one BASIS Professional Register point. Information on how to claim is listed within the video descriptions.