Sartorial was first introduced to Agrovista customers in 2020 and remains a key stone variety with growers today.
Six years on, Sartorial continues to perform. It remains a consistent and reliable choice on farm, performing well as a later driller in both the first and second wheat slots in rotations and still excels in challenging establishment conditions or direct drilled scenarios making it a valuable management toll on farm.
Sartorial has opportunity across the UK with Scottish agronomists also seeing its benefit. Agrovista agronomist Catriona Bancroft saw particular advantage in Sartorial’s rooting ability in 2022 where the soil was light and loose and struggled to hold nutrients through the winter and spring:
“Growing winter wheat at 800ft in the Scottish Borders can be challenging especially as the soil is light and doesn’t hold on to nutrients! The agronomy aim is to have the wheat well-tillered and strong coming out the winter. Both varieties, KWS Extase and Sartorial, have achieved this in spring 2022 with the Extase definitely “leggy”.
The exciting difference between the two is in the rooting, Sartorial plants are much more resistant to come out the ground when pulled and when laid alongside Extase have a much bigger root ball. This characteristic of Sartorial should make it more able to forage for nutrients if we have a dry spell in spring and stay anchored if wet, particularly in this sandy loam soil."
One of the key benefits of Sartorial is its ability for quick establishment - the main reason why we see its prime drilling window as early October rather than September.
Excellent establishment capability backed by Agrovista in-house trials has made Sartorial a popular variety with Agrovista growers
High specific weight, decent Septoria tritici and OWBM resistance builds the package this variety offers
Santiago parentage plus higher spec weight boosts light land performance while rapid, competitive early season development offers later drilling benefits with challenging seedbeds
"Bracket values give guidance on comparative agronomic values based on commercial observations and Agrovista trial performance."
Agrovista agronomist Quentin Ham compared Sartorial emergence early January 2022 at Wantage in Oxfordshire against four key AHDB Recommended List varieties looks at such characteristics as plant and root vigour and general plant health within the vegetative winter stage. While KWS Extase showed marginally better plant vigour, Satorial clearly had longer roots despite being on a stonier part of the field, see table below.
Variety | Plant vigour (0= poor 5 = excellent) | Root vigour (0= poor 5 = excellent) | Plant health (0= poor 5 = excellent) | Other observations |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Graham | 3 | 4.25 | 3.5 More disease, yellowing and dead tissue | Worse slug damage |
Gleam | 3.5 | 4.25 | 3.5 More disease, yellowing and dead tissue | More stoney /flinty soil? |
Extase | 5 | 4.25 | 5 | Best soil? |
Dawsum | 5 | 4 | 4.5 | |
Sartorial | 4.5 Thinner leaf than Dawsum and Extase | 5 Longest roots | 4.5 | More stoney /flinty soil? |
Genetic diversity
Sartorial has quite unusual genetics relative to many currently in the market 2026 with Santiago, Cordiale and Soissons among its back-parentage. Santiago was one variety where yellow rust resistance improved in its latter years and Sartorial has shown the same trait. While some levels of yellow rust were observed in Sartorial in high pressure situations, the variety has nevertheless resisted the disease well since 2021.
Growers need to remain vigilant however and safeguard resistance where possible by diversifying variety choice and reacting quickly where signs of the disease appear.
“Sartorial ranked best out of our varieties in untreated yields [harvest 2025] which I think shows older varieties flat line on disease susceptibility and although may appear old and we think have passed their best they do still perform.” Quentin Ham. Discussing Bayer variety trial results Oxfordshire.
Reliability
No two seasons are ever the same. Regional variations in weather will favour one disease over the next, which in turn will benefit one variety over another.
At AgX Draughton, Leicestershire in 2025 Sartorial’s vigorous rooting gave it advantage through the drier weather, coupled with better yellow rust resistance.
The variety finished well, while others died off early. While Sartorial is generally now losing yield to newer lines its worth holding a portion of hard feed acreage in this genetically diverse variety.
Grain quality
At Agrovista we place huge emphasis on high specific weight, which was one reason why we have always been wary of Champion hard feed.
High specific weight gets you out of trouble whether the run up to harvest is overly wet or dry and the trial at AgX Draughton illustrates this point well. Get your fungicide timings wrong and there is potential for an approximate 2 tonnes per hectare yield drop, with a lower value tonnage too, as the low specific weight of that variety risks less than feed price in a dry year. Sartorial is not risk-free, growers need to remain vigilant, but there is less risk in the feed wheat value being discounted. Sartorial is also orange wheat blossom midge resistant retaining high specific weight without grower intervention.