New biscuitmaking wheat varieties with good disease resistance and high yields are leading to more interest in this sector, especially as they can win premiums of up to £10/t over feed wheat.

Lincolnshire Wolds grower James Walgate turned to these soft-milling Group 3 wheats last season from hard-milling feed wheats and achieved good quality and a yields reaching 10.2t/ha on his sandy loam land.

See also: New bread and feed wheat varieties tipped for success

“We’ve generally grown hard wheat because we can’t always guarantee the quality with our slightly later harvest, but we are getting some good results from the soft Group 3 wheats,” he says.

Having exceeded the five-year farm average yield of 10t/ha, and with biscuit wheats going into an increasingly diverse product range, the Group 3 varieties are now vying for more of Mr Walgate’s 668ha farm.

This season, 25ha of the Group 3 variety Zulu is being grown with Kielder and Revelation on his Hall Farm. Varietal characteristics a fundamental deciding factor in Mr Walgate’s selection of a slow-developing, stiff variety that has a good disease resistance and yields well.

Wheat is normally drilled in the second week of September, with the aim of finishing all the drilling on farm in early October.

“Zulu has really stood out as one of the Group 3 wheats that can fit into our management and give a reliable results. Even this year with the high disease pressure it has looked well,” he says.

Wheat on the Wolds

Crops are established with a plough followed by a Simba Unipress. He then uses a Horsch CO4 drill, which applies Avadex as the first herbicide treatment for blackgrass.

Although blackgrass is yet to be a significant problem on the farm, Mr Walgate is all-too aware it can be one of the major threats to wheat crops.

“We adopt a programme so, as well as ploughing, we rake and roll after harvest before spraying off. We are also using pre- and post-emergence sprays when needed so we are still at a level to rogue them later in the spring,” he says.

High pH soils on the Wold means precision liquid fertilising can helps as phosphate is often locked up, and this approach plays a vital part in getting the best out of his wheat crop.

Market opportunities

Jeremy Pickering, technical director at milling and coating business Bowmans, says these soft biscuit-type wheats are now being used in a widening product range.

The company operates worldwide and has been selling more products each year using Group 3 soft wheats, with many hitting the European market.

Heat-treated flour has become one of Bowman’s most lucrative products, going into a range of cakes, and batter coatings used in fast-food restaurants.

Variety, Hagberg and specific weight are high on the list of requirements for the grain for that flour, according to Mr Pickering.

“We buy everything by single variety and we look at everything by individual characteristics in combination with how we mill it, to give certain finished product characteristics,” he says.

Mark Isaacson, commercial director at the group, agrees there is demand for soft wheats.

“There are still local merchants shipping wheat from Immingham to places like Italy. We’ve got a noodle equivalent being manufactured, and chocolate digestives in Spain, it is a very diverse range,” he explains.

Zulu wheat

Biscuitmaking soft wheat varieties once took up more than 50% of the market share in the UK. That figure has dwindled to about 10% due to yield penalties over feed wheats and the struggles of soft wheats to make the Hagberg and specific weight required by the end users.

Despite this, there are still 11 varieties on the 2014-15 HGCA winter wheat Recommended List, including a new wave of varieties that are creating optimism among Group 3 growers.

Limagrain’s arable technical manager Ron Granger explains the company’s new variety Zulu offers a good option, matching some of the most widely grown feed wheats, such as Diego, when it comes to yield.

“Although Diego is not the highest yielding, it is the most widely grown because of the security and risk management, which is what growers need,” he says.

He points out that Zulu’s yield stability, solid performance throughout the trials at 103% and good disease resistance against yellow rust should make it interesting to wheat growers.

“It is a relatively early variety that looks early enough for Scotland and would do well in the North and the South,” he says.