There was a shining light among the winter wheat plots at the recent variety trials open days. Mayflower was clean and green. It won’t be available to grow commercially for another few years, but it is positive to see a clean variety coming through.

Mayflower has come through work at Goldcrop testing newly bred varieties from the UK and Europe under Irish conditions.

Screening trials are carried out on the company’s trial site in Co Cork where about 900 varieties are tested each year.

Mayflower is rating at eight out of nine for resistance to Septoria on the UK recommended list and it has PCH1 resistance to eyespot.

Shortcomings

Goldcrop crop varieties manager John Dunne said: “We had varieties over the years that were extremely good on Septoria, but they had other shortcomings, usually in the form of grain quality. They were low on bushel or weak on sprouting or fusarium.

“Mayflower is a breakaway from that. Mayflower is actually a milling wheat, so it has a very high KPH and a very good Hagberg falling number. It has the disease resistance and the grain quality”.

At last year’s crops open days, the breakdown of resistance to Septoria from varieties with Cougar in their heritage was clear to see and these varieties have now left the crop variety evaluation programme at the Department of Agriculture.

As those varieties have dropped off there is now a noticeable gap in new varieties coming through with just two candidate varieties this year. While the recommended list remains strong it is important to know that there are more strong varieties coming through.

In the US, some people say they came over on the Mayflower. In a few years’ time we might be saying that Septoria resistance came from Mayflower.