A late-sown seed crop of SY Nairn exceeded all Cambridgeshire grower Luke Palmer’s expectations last season, despite the very dry weather during spring and early summer.
Its robustness stood out early on, setting it up for the difficult season.
The 22ha crop, grown near Streatham, Ely, was drilled in late November on fen soil after potatoes. “We subsoiled and disced before drilling,” says Luke. “The field was a bit wet in places, but overall it went in very well. We carried out a robust blackgrass strategy, but the Nairn shrugged it off.”
The variety exhibited quite a prostrate growth habit to begin with, but soon grew away, he recalls. “We used a low seed rate as supply was limited, but one thing we noticed was Nairn’s strong early root development and the really good amount of tillers. In the spring the crop just got on with it.”
Luke applied the farm standard rate of nitrogen. “A lot of feed wheats are quite hungry, but this did well on 150kg/ha, based on green leaf area and tissue analysis. I’m not saying it always will – this season is different and we have already applied quite a bit of nitrogen to our wheats.”
PGR and fungicides are applied according to variety scores. “Nairn is relatively good on all fronts and there was no Septoria to be seen so we applied a relatively cheap fungicide programme,” says Luke. “There was a bit of yellow rust about but the variety was fine with that.”
He applied tebuconazole at T0, an “incredibly cheap” T1 based on azoxystrobin, followed by benzovindiflupyr and prothioconazole at T2 and prothioconazole plus tebuconazole at T3.
PGR consisted of reduced rate trinexapac at T0, followed by chlormequat. “Nairn has good stiff straw and it stood well, even on the lush fen,” says Luke.
The crop was cut at the beginning of August. “It beat the farm average, yielding over 9t/ha, which was fantastic,” says Luke. “Seed quality was excellent, with really good vigour and a specific weight above 80kg/hl. Considering how dry it was I call that a winner.”
Luke is growing 100ha of Nairn this season, almost five times as much as before. “I don’t grow many Group 4s but the Nairn was that good. And this year’s crop, drilled in October, looks even better. Had I not been asked to grow the variety for seed I would probably have grown it commercially.”
