Thanks again to Warter Priory farms for allowing us to conduct and establish our trials site on the Estate. 

The winter wheat variety site was drilled on Friday the 13th October (We are clearly not a superstitious bunch!). Forty varieties have been drilled and will feature as both treated and untreated. Twenty of these varieties have been selected to randomise and will form the “backbone” of our experimental area for fungicide and nutrition work. A block of Einstein plots has been established on which we shall carry out further small plot work.
 

Having completed the main body of the Wheat site further work on the Nutrient delivery System has been done. As many of you will be aware, this work has attracted a great deal of interest. A different drill was used this year to establish our trials, everything went in well and as you can see from the picture, taken on 24th of Oct, the wheat has started to emerge.

A big thank you goes to Richard and Paul Shepherd for allowing us to establish this new low, sand land site on their farm at Cawood near Selby. This site is in complete contrast to the high Wold plots at Warter and will allow us to compare varieties and inputs across different soils and conditions. We have sown 20 varieties, ten of which will be used for replication work. Drilling took place on Tuesday 17th October.

Our OSR site at Warter was drilled on the 28th August. This year we have included comparative work on establishment methods plus a range of different varieties. Input strategies and seed rate work has also been included.

On request from one of our growers we have also established an area looking at row spacing. This was achieved using highly technical methods and took hours of dedication to produce the desired effect. See row spacing  picture.

The Barley site was drilled on the 20th September. We are looking at seed rate work, variety diversification, as well as seed treatments, their effect on emergence and efficacy are being monitored. Future input strategies will look at topical fungicide applications and the “timing” effect of nutrition on yield and disease control.

The 2006 results are currently with an independent analyser but will be sent to you as soon as we receive them back, they will also be discussed at our Agronomy meeting in February.  I hope you’re now a little clearer on what we’ve been up to and if you would like anymore information please feel free to contact us. 

Lauren

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