United Kingdom
September 20, 2022
A field of RGT Bairstow has performed so well for Pembrokeshire grower Richard Darlington that he is quadrupling the area down to the variety this coming season.
“We were quite interested in RGT Bairstow when we first heard about it,” says Richard, of Syke Farm near Haverfordwest.
“It has a good Septoria resistance score, which looks very useful as we can get close to 60in a year of rain down here. So we put the variety into our farm trials in 2020/21, which we run with Spunhill’s Hugh Roberts.
“It stood out in a scan assessing the amount of green material in late July of 2021. We didn’t take the plots to yield, but it was one of the best of the 17 varieties in the trial in this respect in the high and medium input 24m tramlines, and there was no disaster in the low-input tramline either.
“Some of the varieties were dead on their feet, whereas the Bairstow had a fair bit of green left in it. One variety that looked slightly better was later to harvest, which might have skewed the results a bit, and it also suffered badly with Fusarium.”
As a result, Richard kept some RGT Bairstow seed and sowed a 3.54ha field with it last autumn. “I tried to get hold of new seed but it was in very short supply, so I decided to grow my own.
“It was only a look see, but the field was pretty standard for us – red soil over sandstone that came out of grass two years beforehand.”
The crop was sown towards the end of September at 170kg/ha. It emerged and developed well. “It had good autumn vigour which we like,” says Richard. “Once it starts raining things slow down a bit for us.”
The field was then grazed twice with sheep in the winter, at the end of December and a month later, like most wheats on the farm.
“We were able to ease back on nitrogen, applying about 170kg/ha, and we didn’t need any T0 fungicides on the grazed wheat,” says Richard.
The RGT Bairstow was cut in mid August and more than fulfilled its promise, yielding a total of 52t/ha over a weighbridge, or 14.7t/ha.
“It was our best yield on the farm and I suspect the 2ha or so we also planted with RGT Bairstow around the trial plots would have yielded a similar amount,” says Richard. “It looked a lovely crop with big bold heads.
“This autumn we are going to put a few more fields into RGT Bairstow – we’ve saved 3t so will be sowing about 16ha.
“We are also sticking with Skyfall and Extase. The Skyfall always does well for us – it seems to suit our ground. It comes early and we tend to drill it later, and it is a good second wheat. It has that vigour and flexibility – we grow maize which can sometimes drag on.
“The Bairstow suits early drilling so it complements the Skyfall quite nicely, and it is later to harvest which should help spread the workload and will reduce the risk of spoilage if harvest is delayed.”
Bryn Thomas, general manager at Shropshire-based agricultural supplier Spunhill, says: “RGT Bairstow shone out in Richard’s trial last season and looked a very promising variety. It looked very good again in this season’s trial and Richard has been very pleased with his commercial crop.
“We have also had Bairstow in our trial in Staffordshire for two years, and it has looked consistent there and is certainly one of the stronger RAGT varieties. It has quite reasonable all-round disease rating and Pembrokeshire is quite a high challenge area, putting varieties under a fair bit of pressure.
“Based on Richard’s experience over the past two seasons, it’s certainly one to look at.”
RGT Bairstow
- Highest yielding soft wheat (RL 2022/23)
- Very consistent performer
- Good disease ratings
- OWBM resistance
- Suitable for early drilling but can be sown to mid February
- Excellent second wheat
- Good grain quality
- Approved for distilling
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