Brian Hammond is “more than likely” to be growing the biscuit-making wheat variety Merit commercially next season after a robust performance as a seed crop.

The south Lincolnshire farm manager is growing 40ha each of Merit and fellow biscuit-maker Astronomer, and both have looked good throughout the season on his light sandy loam soils.

He is looking for another winter wheat variety to drill commercially alongside old favourite Siskin this autumn, and at the moment Merit has the edge.

“We will be more than likely growing Merit with the Siskin as it is a robust variety, but we won’t make the final decision until the combines go through the wheat,” he says.

See also: Biscuit wheat grower reveals his Group 3 variety choices for 2021-22

Yield over 10t/ha

© Elsoms

Winter wheat average yields on the farm are 8.8t/ha to 9.4t/ha, but with this season’s favourable growing weather in the spring and summer he is looking for both varieties to yield more than 10t/ha.

With 80ha of potatoes grown on the farm and a lot of attention switching to this key crop in the spring and summer, he is looking for good disease-resistant robust wheat varieties that need minimal attention.

“Merit is a good robust variety that stands well and has not gone down even with the heavy thunderstorms we have had,” he says.

The variety received 220kg/ha of nitrogen fertiliser with the last split at the end of April just before wet weather arrived, when he says the variety stood strong even after 52mm of rain over a single weekend in June.

Yellow rust

The variety showed no early signs of disease so an early season T0 spray was not applied, and the farm’s standard three-spray programme of a T1, T2 and T3 was used, costing about £100/ha.

The Merit was drilled in the third week of September at a 170kg/ha seed rate, and despite the yellow rust disease pressure this season stayed clear of the disease up until the T1 spray.

The variety has high resistance scores of 8s for both yellow and brown rust and a strong 6.6 for septoria, but has a weakness for mildew down at a 3, in a 1-9 scoring system where 1 is very susceptible and 9 shows good resistance.

© Brian Hammond © Elsoms

Despite this lowly mildew rating, Mr Hammond says there was no disease to note in the autumn, and the variety looked sound heading into the winter.

Mr Hammond manages 680ha of arable land at Westmoreland Farms, Howell, near Heckington, just east of Sleaford, on sandy light loams and medium-heavy soils, just on the edge of the Fens.

Group 3 wheats

Merit was one of five new biscuit-making Group 3 wheat added to the AHDB Recommended List last December, with a recommendation to be grown in the eastern region of the UK, and seed of the variety is widely available for this autumn’s drillings

The variety, bred by Elsoms, shows a fungicide-treated yield for the East of 103%, just 1% behind leading Group 3 variety Prince. Merit has a protein content of 11.7%, specific weight of 76.5 kg/hl and a Hagberg of 255 on the Recommended List.

Merit, as a soft-milling Group 3 wheat, can be used for biscuit-making, distilling and for export, and Mr Hammond is impressed by this broad market appeal.

“The more potential customers there are for a variety, then the better it is to grow,” says Mr Hammond.