Resurgence of interest in Merit winter wheat

Breeder Elsoms is reporting renewed interest in Group 3 soft wheat Merit.

Strong on resistance to both Septoria tritici and yellow rust, Merit has  multiple end markets. And its popularity  is no surprise to Lincolnshire farmer Tim Booth, of JM Booth and Sons.

 Based in Swineshead, near Boston, and managing a total cropping area of 404ha, Mr Booth has been growing Group 3 wheats for several years. The variety offers more flexibility of end markets – and is easy to meet milling specification, he says.

 “As a business we tend to concentrate on feed wheats, staying away from milling wheats and the complexities of meeting full milling specifications. However, I do grow Group 3 varieties if they yield consistently and are easy to manage.” 

Mr Booth grew Merit for the third year last season. He drilled 34.7ha on 13 October into a high Grade 2 silt as a good first wheat entry after peas.

“It established very well through the early autumn, competing well against our main weed burden of blackgras. With the help of a mild winter, it pushed on nicely into the spring, following 250kg/ha of nitrogen applied across two splits in early March and early April. ”

Spray programme

No T0 was applied, with a fairly standard fungicide programme of Fluxapyroxad + Pyraclostrobin for Septoria and rust control at T1, along with a PGR of 0.75l/ha of Chlormequat.  At T2, Mr Booth applied Fenpicoxamid at 1.2l/ha – again for Septoria – with 0.4l/ha of Prothioconazole as an ear spray at T3. 

“Although we did have yellow rust pressure in our area this year, Merit has always been strong on its resistance to yellow rust and the crop remained very clean right through till harvest. We cut on 31 July and were rewarded with an average yield of 10.7t/ha at 13.6% moisture, ahead of our two previous yields for the variety. 

The specific weight was 80kg/hl with a Hagberg falling number of 258 and Merit produced a nice bold grain with the overall quality in the shed looking extremely good.