Norfolk grower’s verdict on new high-protein milling wheat Vibe
Mark Means © David Jones Norfolk grower Mark Means hopes the new milling winter wheat variety Vibe could become a firm fixture on his farm due to its high protein content and efficient nitrogen use.
Good standing ability, high yield for a Group 1 milling variety, solid disease resistance and encouraging words from flour millers make Mark optimistic for the variety.
Old milling favourite variety Crusoe previously had the highest protein grain content of any variety on the AHDB Recommended List (RL) for at least a decade, but Vibe from breeder KWS has pipped it, with the added benefit of improved disease resistance.
Vibe’s protein content of 13.2% tops Crusoe’s 13.1%, and it has a high Hagberg and specific weight, well within millers’ needs for breadmaking grist, which tend to look for a minimum protein of 13%, Hagberg of 250 and specific weight of 76kg/ha.
See also: Can biologicals help milling wheat growers hit protein specs?
Potential for Vibe
Mark is growing 550ha of largely milling winter wheats in north-west Norfolk on the edge of The Wash.
He has specialised in breadmaking varieties for more than a dozen years, and has high hopes for the variety.
“Vibe looks like Crusoe with more yield and better disease resistance. We have only seen the odd streak of yellow rust in untreated trials this season,” he says.
Mark looks for wheat varieties with consistent yield that stand well, are clean of disease and early to mature.
His Vibe crops looked good in early May, with low pressure from septoria in dry conditions and little rain since 20mm at the beginning of April.
“Good straw, good disease resistance, good protein and more efficient nitrogen use makes me confident to grow a bigger area over the next few years,” adds Mark, who won the Farmers Weekly Farmer of the Year Award in 2024.
The new milling variety entered the RL at the end of last year with a fungicide-treated yield of 98%, just behind top-yielding miller Zyatt at 100%.
It has the highest protein content and best overall disease resistance, illustrated by the fact Vibe has by far the highest yield of the six RL Group 1 milling varieties without using fungicides.
Better at converting N
Mark, who farms 900ha of silty loams and silty clay soils just west of King’s Lynn, grew two fields (32ha) of Vibe for seed for harvest 2024.
The variety showed an average yield of 11.3t/ha, ahead of Zyatt on 10.4t/ha and equal with Group 2 miller Palladium at 11.3t/ha.
His highest protein Vibe field received the equivalent of 277kg N/ha (247kg/ha applied plus 30kg/ha residual nitrogen from a previous vining pea crop) and gave a grain protein content of 13.6% at a yield of 11.2t/ha, meaning 1kg/ha of nitrogen gave 5.5kg/ha of grain protein.
His highest protein Crusoe field had 313kg/ha of nitrogen (all applied) and gave 13.4% gain protein at a 9.3t/ha yield, meaning 1kg/ha of nitrogen gave 4.0kg/ha of grain protein.
This genetic advantage of Vibe being more efficient at converting nitrogen into grain protein could be very useful in meeting most millers’ 13% protein needs.
There was also a fungicide saving with Vibe compared to Zyatt and Crusoe with extra rust fungicides needed at T0 and T1 to keep Zyatt clean of yellow rust and Crusoe safe from brown rust.
Vibe is slightly later to harvest than some milling varieties, but this fits in well for Mark to give a good spread of harvest dates.
Harvest 2025
For this season, Mark’s 550ha of winter wheat is made up of 45% of Zyatt, 20% Palladium, 9% Parkin, 21% Vibe, and 5% of feed wheat Dawsum.
It was poor yield that made Mark give up on Crusoe. Last season, his Crusoe gave an average protein of 13.2% to Zyatt’s 12.0%, but Zyatt gave an extra 2t/ha of yield.
As Vibe is a later developing variety, it did not “run way” in the autumn, so this season there was a saving on plant growth regulators.
Mark’s 120ha of Vibe this season was drilled from the 7-10 October 2024 and is grown as first wheats. The crops looked good in early May as any septoria dried up with the weather.
Milling winter wheat varieties on the AHDB recommended list |
||||||
| Variety | Zyatt | Vibe | Skyfall | Cheer | Illustrious | Crusoe |
| Fungicide-treated yield | 100 | 98 | 97 | 96 | 96 | 95 |
| Untreated yield | 70 | 89 | 64 | 82 | 81 | 72 |
| Disease resistance | ||||||
| Yellow rust | 3 | 8 | 3 | 8 | 8 | 8 |
| Brown rust | 7 | 6 | 8 | 6 | 5 | 3 |
| Septoria | 6.3 | 6.6 | 5.9 | 6 | 6.1 | 6.5 |
| Agronomics | ||||||
| Lodging resistance without PGR | 8 | 8 | 9 | 8 | 8 | 8 |
| Ripening (days) | 0 | +1 | 0 | +1 | +1 | +1 |
| Source: AHDB | ||||||
Miller’s verdict
One of the country’s largest independent flour millers – Heygates – says it likes the look of new milling winter wheat variety Vibe and hopes to buy it from this summer’s harvest.
George Mason, senior executive at the group, says he is pleased to see two new milling varieties available, Vibe and Cheer.
This comes at a time when the flour millers have seen two years of generally low proteins in milling varieties.
Breadmaker Allied Bakeries, the maker of Kingsmill and Allinson’s bread, notes the variety Vibe performed well.
In baking tests at the Allied Technical Centre in Maidenhead, the variety outperformed Zyatt, giving a softer and whiter crumb and a larger loaf volume.
Mark Charlton, head of cereal milling and baking science at the centre, says Vibe was of better quality than Zyatt, with good gluten strength and very good potential across a wide range of recipes.
The two varieties come at a time when the percentage of UK milling wheat used by the UK milling industry is set to fall below 70% in the 2024-2025 season, the lowest proportion for more than 20 years.
In a typical year, millers use 80% home-grown wheat out of their annual requirement of 5m tonnes.
Joe Brennan, head of technical and regulatory affairs at the industry association UK Flour Millers, says this is due to the falling UK milling wheat area and the decline in growers meeting millers’ specifications as a result of bad weather and high input costs.
He points out only 20% of the UK wheat area this season is sown with Group 1 milling wheat varieties, down from 28% in 2019.
He continues that new variety Vibe has shown consistent breadmaking performance season after season in millers’ trials.
Breeder’s View
Vibe comes from breeder KWS, offering the combination of high yields and high-grain protein content to help invigorate the home-grown milling wheat sector.
Olivia Bacon, the breeder’s product manager for wheat, says the variety has performed well across rotations both as a first or second wheat, which is important as 60% of milling wheats are sown as a second cereal.
There should be enough seed to account for about 8% of the certified seed market for drilling in autumn 2025, says KWS.
KWS UK are exhibiting at this year’s Cereals event on stand 1142.
