Harvesting winter wheat© Tim Scrivener

The winter wheat harvest is 90% complete and about 70% of spring barley has gone under the combine, with the majority of crops still to be cut in Scotland, according to the latest harvest report from crop consultant Adas.

This brings the total UK harvested crop of cereals and oilseed rape crops to 3.1m hectares by 6 September, or about 94% of the national crop, with oats 80% cut and spring wheat 60%.

Typical wheat yields are running unchanged from the last two Adas report at 7.8-8.0t/ha in line with the UK’s five-year average of 7.9t/ha with the lower yields coming from crops suffering from diseases, weeds or from poor drainage.

See also: Spring barley is best-performing crop in 2016

Wheat quality is good, with most milling crops meeting industry specification. Protein levels of crops cut in the past week dipped very slightly to 12.8%, while specific weights were 76kg/hl and hagbergs averaged 259.

Spring barley typical yields dipped slightly to 5.7-5.9t/ha, but were still above the five-year average of 5.6t/ha, with weekly nitrogen contents averaging 1.6% for malting varieties. Screenings were low, with a weekly average of 4%.

Typical oat yields are 5.4-5.6t/ha, just below the five-year average of 5.7t/ha, with most winter crops cut and just some spring crops waiting to be harvested.

Winter barley and oilseed rape crops are now harvested, with typical barley yields unchanged from previous reports at 6.0-6.2t/ha, below the five-year average of  6.8t/ha, while typical oilseed rape yields are still down at 3.0-3.2t/ha from the five-year average of 3.6t/ha.