The independent agricultural research group ADAS has launched a Yield Enhancement Network which is designed to promote high crop yields from the UK’s arable farming industry. The Yield Enhancement Network - or YEN - consists of a group of major agricultural organisations who will develop a knowledge exchange programme, working with farmers to improve crop yields.

Its corporate members providing sponsorship are leading companies from the arable farming industry, including crop science organisations BASF, Bayer Crop Science, Frontier, Hutchinsons, Syngenta, The Courtyard Partnership and Yara.

Professor Roger Sylvester-Bradley, principal research scientist at ADAS, said: “Enhanced crop productivity in the UK will be crucial in showing how to feed the growing global population. We need to test every new idea for achieving bigger yields. The YEN has been set up to foster and energise innovation in the arable industry, so we get to understand how bigger yields can be produced.”

Initial objectives of the Yield Enhancement Network are to identify record yielding crops and work out how they were achieved. Through competing to establish new yield records, the organisation will encourage new thinking in crop improvement.

YEN members met recently and one of their first actions was to devise rules for UK farmers to pursue the record yield title for the 2013 harvest. This will be launched officially in spring 2013. The competition will consider yield relative to land potential, so all farmers can enter.

Prof Sylvester-Bradley continued: “Major players in the industry are already working to break the current yield stagnation. There is a real need to support and harness these initiatives. By combining the expertise and knowledge that the YEN brings together, we will be seeking to identify new approaches that can enhance crop production across the UK.”

He said the biophysical potential of wheat in the UK could be close to 20 tonnes per hectare. Leading farms and research trials in the UK can regularly hit 12 tonnes, but the average commercial farm produces less than eight tonnes per hectare, with no increase for over 15 years.

Currently, the UK record for a wheat yield is held by David Hoyles, a Lincolnshire farmer who grew 14.3t/ha in 2011. He broke a 20-year record held by Gordon Rennie, who harvested 13.99t/ha on a farm in Midlothian, Scotland, in 1981.

Prof Sylvester-Bradley continued: “Obviously there’s a lot of potential to improve crop productivity but while crop prices have been low, growers have been more preoccupied with reducing their costs. The YEN’s objective is to re-energise interest in realising high yields through networking businesses that are targeting output, and are willing to try out new techniques.

Prof Sylvester-Bradley, who worked on a world record-breaking wheat yield of 15.7t/ha in New Zealand in 2010, said that the YEN will evolve by attracting more members and bringing in funding so that in future it can carry out its own research to test any ‘way out’ ideas that may boost production.

He added: “We’ve got a core of members which has allowed the YEN to get going but we’re encouraging more organisations to join the network and create vibrant competition and a knowledge exchange programme that will benefit everyone. We’re throwing the net wide and would invite any agricultural company that wants to be involved to get in touch. We are also involving other research organisations such as NIAB TAG, and like-minded groups overseas.”

The YEN follows an ADAS recommendation included in the report of the Defra-commissioned Green Food Project, published over the summer, which set out priorities that should enable UK agriculture to simultaneously boost food production and protect the environment.