Yup, they are brill.

Depends entirely on land type and drilling date. Heavy land = hybrid. After wheat = hybrid. Behind a subsoiler = hybrid. Later drilling = hybrid. Only time I would look at a conventional is for something going in late July early August, and then I would be considering a HOLL variety anyway.

What variety are you growing at the moment?

In the end it probably depends on what you're looking for in a variety. If easier combining is important to you, then sticking with a lower biomass conventional variety, such as Castille / ES Astrid is probably the best option. Hybrids tend to have more biomass making that side of things more tricky. That said, some new hybrids such as Excalibur and some of the new low biomass (semi-dwarf) hybrids do have lower biomass and are reasonably similar to Castille.

Yields of the newer hybrids (most of which are larger biomass types) are tending to be higher than conventionals (at least on the current HGCA list), but there are also some good high yielding conventionals. For example, in the east /west region, hybrid PR46W21 is top, followed by Dimension (hybrid)  with conventional Vision third. In the north conventional Catana leads, with hybrids Flash, Cuillin and Emerson next. Of the newest varieties, DK Cabernet (conventional) did very well in the east / west, while hybrid Compass did well in all regions.

If you're in the north, and light leaf spot is an issue for you, Emerson and Cuillin are worth a look as they have good resistance to that disease. Disease resistance against phoma appears pretty similar across all varieties (except hybrid Excel with a 9). The link between hybrid varieties and phoma weakness appears to have been broken in recent years, thankfully.

The other advantage that is often said for hybrids is that they have early season vigour, which helps with establishment. I think most people now recognise that is more of an advantage in later drilled crops (September) than in August, but last year (when lots of crops were established in September) seemed to suggest that this wasn't quite as clear cut as previously thought, and there were good and bad hybrids, as well as conventionals, for early season vigour.

Finally, you can't home-save a hybrid.

Its was well noted last year that, as well as better establishment, modern hybrid varieties had much more vigour in spring time, and thus better recovery from pigeons and weather damage.

Harvesting is not an issue with hybrids. All can be manipulated with a bit of Caramba or delaying first N splits to make them short. True, the first year we grew Excalbur it was around 7 foot high and the combine driver unhappy. Wasnt unhappy at the size of the heap though. In any case, you will be driling them at mugh lower rates than conventionals.

I wouldnt bother much about stated yields - got to be a few bags of currents short of the full fruitcake to swap out a proven variety for an extra 2% yield. If you are not a "seed" grower, you have to question the sense in home saving seed when you cant clean out many weed seeds, rather than buying new decent seed.

Castille is a brill conventional variety, and has the pedigree. But if you are on heavier land, better to delay drilling and get a better seedbed using the hybrids that can go in later and still be happy.

A real split is occuring with rape varieties now, with much more attention payed to ones suitable for earlier/later drilling etc. But again, if you are able to drill earlier, well worth a look at a HOLL variety - pigeons dont much like eating them and they are more like the old single-lows which produce a biologically more vigourous and leafy plant.

I have grown HOLL varieties for the last 4 years ( Splendor and V1??) and have now gone back to 100% conventional varieties. Couldnt see any evidence of pigeons not liking it and certainly no more vigour than conventional varieties. Very slow growing compared to castille, which leaves it especially prone to pigeon damage and also slow getting away in the spring. When I first started growing it thought it was going to give a good gross margin given the premium, but yeild loss, hassle chasing pigeons due to smaller plants means there will be no more HOLL on our farm unless the vigour of the varietys improve alot and at the minuire I certainly wouldnt recomend it to anyone. This year we have a small amount of astrid, mainly castille and a small amount of DK cabernet to try.