Cereal 2008 event

We recently enjoyed a very busy and productive 2 days at Cereals 2008 at Leadenham Heath, Lincolnshire
The talk of high fertiliser prices seems to have focused growers thoughts that the Legume break crops are going to be very important in the future. Winter beans in particular will be in good demand this Autumn, with virtually Nil fertiliser requirement beans will be very important in the rotation for the foreseeable future.

The uptake of winter bean seed is expected to be firm, however seed plantings are 30% up on the previous year and last season we experienced poorer than average seed crop yields, therefore there should be enough to go round, albeit it may get tight as we get nearer to planting time.
If the market does increase then the produce should easily find ready markets – we are under capacity in the UK and are still a long way under the much larger areas of beans grown in years gone by. Many UK compounders have had to cut pulses out of their rations in recent years or have had to buy in imported protein, so they should welcome a larger crop area. The export market will also of course welcome a larger crop and should enable us to compete in the international bean trade without adversely affecting the overall farm price too much.

This season at Cereals we featured agronomy options for winter beans, this included varying levels of fungicidal inputs, micro nutrition and some of our work on inoculants. This stimulated much interest along with our demonstration on drilled versus ploughing / early versus late sowing. Perennial questions are always raised about ideal plant populations, these vary depending upon sowing time and method of establishment.

Sultan is our new introduction for 2008 and caused much interest, with short, early, stiff straw and yield advantage over Wizard Sultan looks set to be an important variety for 2009 and beyond

Marrowfat peas will figure in growers plans again stronger than before, due to high contract prices for 2009, new variety Sakura looks an outstanding prospect.