HGCA has published its Recommended Lists for 2013/14. The lists were released on Monday (3rd December), providing recommendations by region for the UK's major arable crops.

New to the Recommended Lists this year are resistance ratings for fusarium ear blight in spring wheat and ramularia in barley. The levy-funded arable association said the new categories were added in light of responses to a grower survey carried out at Cereals 2011.

41 new varieties have been added to this year's Lists, and 24 varieties have been removed. Dr Simon Oxley, HGCA Senior Research and Knowledge Transfer Manager responsible for the Recommended Lists, said, "The large number of varieties added and removed this year is due to breeders successfully bringing forward varieties with high yields compared to current varieties. These new varieties have also been tested in a very challenging season as part of the RL system. When using the Lists, in addition to looking at yield, growers need to take into account regional factors such as disease risk and markets for specific types of grain."

Of the ten newly recommended wheat varieties, one is a nabim Group 2 bread making variety, Chilton, which is also provisionally approved for ukp export. Four are possible uks varieties for biscuit making, three are nabim Group 3 soft varieties for biscuit-making and two are hard feed varieties.

For winter barley, four new varieties with malting potential have performed well agronomically – Talisman, KWS Joy, Mezmaar and Solomon. Feed variety KWS Glacier, recommended for the UK, shows a step forward in yield over existing varieties, HGCA said.

Two new varieties were also given regional recommendation; Matros for the East and California for the West. HGCA added, "There is a good advance in spring barley yields of both malting and feed varieties."

The East/West Oilseed Rape List sees seven additions and the North List nine, with DK Imagine CL, the first variety with imidazolinone (IMI) tolerance, included in the Oilseed Rape Descriptive List.

Although no new oat varieties have been added to the list, two winter oat varieties have been removed. Six wheat varieties have also been removed, along with three winter and two spring barleys. Eleven varieties of oilseed rape have also been taken off regional Recommended Lists.

HGCA also announced on Monday that it is running a pilot project which will see live disease monitoring from Recommended List trials in Oxfordshire and Cornwall published on the HGCA website.  The agency said the new project forms part of its future plans to provide growers with more regional specific information for the Recommended Lists.

Further information on the new varieties is available here. The full Recommended Lists booklet will be distributed in early 2013.

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