This spring cropping decisions and variety choices will be more important than ever before, with increased acres of spring crops being drilled to meet new CAP legislation or to help tackle tough blackgrass.

If you need a third crop, why not consider spring barley? It has arguably been the crop of the year for the last two years and with dual purpose varieties available to maximise your marketing opportunities; growing for the market has never been more important for spring barley growers as this market continues to develop and expand says Les Daubney, cereals product manager, for Limagrain UK.

“The UK malting industry uses around 1.9 million tonnes of domestic barley every year; of that, over 1.6 million tonnes is spring barley and of that, 880,000 tonnes were purchased from Scotland in 2013.”

“As the demand for distilling has risen, the proportion of barley purchased that is in the lower nitrogen bracket of

“To date, only two varieties have full approval for both brewing and malt distilling: Concerto and Odyssey. In addition, Belgravia is approved for both malt and grain distilling.”

Mr Daubney adds that this year however has seen the recommendation of four new and exciting dual purpose varieties from Limagrain, Octavia, Olympus, Sienna and Deveron. Offering not just a step up in yield and improved agronomics, these varieties are showing strong potential within both the brewing and distilling markets.

Octavia has potential for malt distilling and brewing and is already in trials in France having performed well to date. Olympus has the potential for malt and grain distilling, and Deveron has the potential for malt distilling, combined with a good specific weight with acceptable screenings.

“With its nice, bold sample, low screenings and good hot water extraction characteristics Sienna has potential for distilling and brewing.”

In this ‘Growing for Market Guide’, these new varieties can be compared against existing varieties. Yield, agronomic and market information for each variety is listed making it easy to choose the right variety for a given situation based on the results from official and internal trials – helping to make the best variety choice for your farm and intended market.

Importantly for the success of spring crops, and as more and more barley crops are drilled in December and early January, the Guide highlights how to manage these early drilled barley crops covering seed rates and fungicide and nitrogen programmes against more conventionally drilled crops in January or March.

The Growing for Market Guide is available to download or order from the website www.lgseeds.co.uk/springbarley and email: enquiries@limagrain.co.uk