A team of students from Newcastle University has won the 2013 Cereals Challenge with their focus on a comprehensive and effective agronomy package on their crop of winter barley paying off.

 

With only one point between the winners and runners up, it was a tightly fought competition with last year’s winners Harper Adams taking second place, and local Lincoln-based Riseholme College taking third place.

 

The Newcastle University team goes away with a trophy and £1000 prize money to share between the team members plus an additional £500 for the university.

For the 2013 challenge, students were required to grow a crop of winter barley reflecting the increasing hectares of winter barley being grown as new varieties offer feed yields similar to those of second wheats.

Judged by Keith Norman, technical director at Velcourt, Dick Neale, technical manager at Hutchinsons and Alastair Priestly of Patrick Dean Ltd, the Cereals event host farmer on the Tuesday before Cereals, the competing teams were assessed on input cost management, estimated crop yield and the quality, appropriateness and timeliness of agronomic recommendations, as well as the marketing of the crop.

However, conditions on the Boothby Graffoe site have been particularly challenging this season and the student teams have had to carefully consider their recommendations to nurture the crop through the difficult early spring conditions.

“This year it was the team that were able to respond to the season by considering every aspect of the crop’s requirements; managing lodging, disease and nutrition to keep the crop healthy, as well as making the best marketing decisions,“ says Dick Neale, technical director with Hutchinsons.

The Cereals Challenge, organised by Hutchinsons and Velcourt, is a competition that challenges students to grow and market a cereal crop on the Cereals site. The challenge now in its fourth year continues to be as popular as ever with 13 teams competing for the six places for the 2013 challenge.

Team leader of the winning team, Greg Colebrook who is doing an agricultural degree at Newcastle says. “We are thrilled that we have won the Challenge. Growing a real time barley crop has been a really useful learning experience, and for all of the team taking part in the Cereals Challenge it has confirmed our interest in crop production and particularly agronomy as we look ahead to the future. “