With the HGCA Recommended Lists for 2008/09 due to be announced this week, Andrew Blake examines the selection process and canvasses views on what new names they should contain.

There should be few surprises in the new Recommended Lists to anyone understanding the selection process and keeping a close eye on trials results on the HGCA‘s website, says RL manager Jim McVittie.

Since the HGCA took over full responsibility for RLs in 2001 the decision-making that precedes the announcements has become more transparent, says Dr McVittie.

“Before we took over there was a feeling among some people that they never quite knew what the rules were.

“Now we’re trying to provide as much clarity as possible. All the data behind the decisions areavailable to levy payers on the HGCA web-site, so there shouldn’t be any real surprises.”

The various committees set up under HGCA’s Crop Evaluation banner, which consist of representatives of breeders, trials specialists and agronomists, pathologists, growers and end-users, work to a set of well-defined rules and flow charts to decide on varieties’ fate, he says.

“The rules aren’t set in stone,” he stresses. “But the principle is that we try not to make up policy at the decision meetings in November.”

Meetings in June determine any changes deemed necessary in the definitions, guidelines and criteria for variety recommendation.

The criteria cover six key areas that feature in the flow charts:

•  Sufficient data.
• UK market segments.
• End-use quality requirements.
• UK minimum standards.
• Balance of features that are significantly better.
• Specialist or regional varieties.

“We review the criteria at one meeting and apply them at the next.”

The ultimate decisions are all about balancing the features of competing varieties against each other, says Dr McVittie. The features are ranked in importance with characters such as yield, lodging resistance and Septoria tritici resistance, for example, being the most important in wheat.

For cereals, UK-treated yield remains the main driver, with any variety achieving 2% more than current controls being automatically recommended, provided it meets minimum standards in all other respects.

“Any varieties below that require a positive balance of features against recommended varieties in order to be recommended.”

For UK recommendation the key question is,does the variety have a balance of features that are sufficiently better than existing varieties such that it could potentially provide a more consistent economic return in the UK market?

Should full UK recommendation not be justified the next question is, would it provide an economic benefit in specialist or regional markets over existing varieties?’

For example, a variety may be particularly suitable for northern growers only.

“If it’s a wheat, it may be orange blossom midge-resistant, or if it’s an oilseed rape it may be resistant to club root. It may also have exceptional untreated yield.”

But, again, the key point is that the criteria for making that decision will have been already agreed upon, he points out.

Balance hard to determine

Whether the balance between yield and other factors, such as disease resistance, is correct has long been difficult to judge, acknowledges Richard Fenwick, former NIAB cereals specialist now running his own variety trials and consultancy business.

“It has always been a tricky dilemma.In theory, for the benefit of the grower’s pocket and the environment, there should be more emphasis placed on recommending varieties with excellent disease resistance and perhaps lower yields. But as time has shown, this type of variety has never become popular.

“Growers prefer to treat varieties with fungicides and get a higher yield.

“The answer would be to show, if possible, that a greater financial margin could be obtained by lowering fungicide inputs and accepting a lower yield.However, I’m still not convinced that this is always the case in practical terms, so it may be difficult to prove.”

RL commentators

Bridget Carroll – Fleetmarsh (Lincolnshire)

Andrew Cotton – Cotton Consultancy (Oxfordshire)

Richard Fenwick – Independent variety consultant (Cambridgeshire)

Bill Harbour – Former Farmers Weekly Barometer (Kent)

Patrick Stephenson – Farmers Weekly Arable Adviser of the Year

Malcolm Williams – Park View Agricultural Consultancy (Gloucestershire)