Cereal Cultivar Evaluation Booklets

The 2017/18 season will be remembered for its unusual weather events. The season began and ended with above average rainfall and in between we had very dry conditions and the hottest summer on record. Record rainfall at the beginning of the season in the north and east affected establishment and delayed sowing in many regions. A drought was declared in Taranaki and western parts of the Manawatu-Whanganui. Many crops across the country suffered from the heat, resulting in reduced grain yields and in some cases crops being harvested for silage instead.

Graham and new numbered lines KWW72 and KWW78 were the top performing feed wheat cultivars under both irrigated and dryland conditions in Ca

nterbury. These cultivars, along with CRWT233, were also top performers in Southland.

A number of new milling wheat lines are performing well. CRWT218 is a premium grade milling wheat yielding around 8% higher than Conquest in its third year of trials. CRWT235 is a medium grade milling wheat and SFR86-073 a gristing wheat, both performing well in their first season of CPT trials.

FAR welcomes any queries or suggestions to further improve these booklets. Alternatively, if you require any additional information that we have not included please contact us.

Click here to read pdf

Graham and new numbered lines KWW72 and KWW78 were the top performing feed wheat cultivars under both irrigated and dryland conditions in Canterbury. These cultivars, along with CRWT233, were also top performers in Southland.

A number of new milling wheat lines are performing well. CRWT218 is a premium grade milling wheat yielding around 8% higher than Conquest in its third year of trials.

CRWT235 is a medium grade milling wheat and SFR86-073 a gristing wheat, both performing well in their first season of CPT trials.

FAR welcomes any queries or suggestions to further improve these booklets. Alternatively, if you require any additional information that we have not included please

contact us.

Click here to read the full pdf

The spring series of cereal cultivar trials has again confirmed the high yield performance of cultivars entering the system

over the past two years. Looking at the four year means the five top performing spring feed barley cultivars in Canterbury trials included RGT Planet and Laureate plus three pre-commercial cultivars. The bread wheat cultivar Discovery was again the highest yielding bread wheat in the Canterbury spring sown wheat trials.

FAR welcomes any queries or suggestions to further improve these booklets, or if you require any additional information that we have not included please contact us.

Click here to read pdf

Disease ratings are a very important component of deciding which cultivar to grow. Cultivar disease resistance ratings are based on a combination of scores from disease nurseries, CPT2 trials, and previous season’s scores. Both autumn and spring disease nurseries are planted at Lincoln while there is a spring only nursery at Plant & Food Research, Palmerston North. A cultivar or mix of cultivars which are very susceptible to the disease in question are sown evenly throughout each nursery for stripe rust, leaf rust and powdery mildew. In the case of Septoria tritici blotch, infected stubble is also spread throughout the nursery. Assessments are carried out in some of the CPT2 trials, especially in trials where fungicides have not been applied on one replicate.

Each cultivar is then given a rating for resistance to each disease: R (resistant); MRR (mostly resistant); MR (moderately resistant); MS (moderately susceptible); MSS (mostly susceptible); S (susceptible). Where resistance varies according to the presence of particular races of the pathogen, an average is given and this is indicated with an asterisk on the rating.

Some diseases are more difficult to rate. For example Fusarium head blight (FHB) scores are highly variable from site to site and season to season, as the primary time for infection is flowering, and the symptoms are most apparent 15 to 20 days later. Therefore, both the maturity of a cultivar and the rainfall patterns around flowering need to be taken into consideration when assessing susceptibility. Typically, FHB nurseries favour later maturing lines which appear more resistant because their flowering coincides with drier weather. This season a specific trial was run at Palmerston North. The trial was infected with maize straw to encourage infection by FHB. Regular rainfall over flowering gave perfect conditions for infection resulting in a successful trial. This trial will be repeated this season to strengthen the FHB ratings.

FAR welcomes any queries or suggestions to further improve these booklets. Alternatively, if you require any additional information that we have not included please contact us.

Rob Craigie
Research Manager

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Five of the top performing spring sown barley cultivars yielded an average of 10 t/ha or above across the Canterbury trials in the 2015-16 season. They all have been in CPT2 for three years or less, showing that progress is being made in barley breeding. Of the named cultivars, standout performers from the four year average analysis include Sanette, Scholar, Shada, RGT Planet and Piper.

These cultivars are showing stability across different environments and performing well in all regions tested. The bread wheat Discovery which is now in its third year of the spring sown CPT2 trials is showing consistently high yields in both Canterbury and the southern North Island.

FAR welcomes any queries or suggestions to further improve these booklets, or if you require any additional information that we have not included please contact us.

Rob Craigie

Research Manager

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