Cereals 2026 did not disappoint.

Mucky conditions dominated the days leading up to the event and when the crowd arrived to the soil pit on Wednesday afternoon, they could see how the land had dried out so quickly – stones.

Underneath less than a foot of soil in places were stones, that almost looked like a stone wall.

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It also explained why we heard Clarkson himself complaining about dry conditions for his crops.

Attendees on Thursday had to deal with mucky conditions as rain came down.

Excitement

The Cereals show had returned to the performance of shows past, after a lull in recent years.

That no doubt came from the excitement of hosting the event at Jeremy Clarkson’s Diddly Squat Farm, but also some new technologies and products in the industry.

FMC launched its new herbicide Fundatis, which can be used in a blackgrass and Italian ryegrass control programmes, but key to that is it is part of a programme. This product will not work on its own.

Varieties

There were plenty of varieties on show from many different breeders. Varieties that succeed in England, often don’t make it over to Ireland, but there were some to look out for.

Belter spring barley is currently under seed production in Ireland. It was on display at Cereals having received full approval from the Malting Barley Committee in Britain for distilling.

It is now a fully approved brewing and distilling variety in Britain by the association and is one to watch in Ireland.

Arrow is another spring barley variety to look out for. It was a Syngenta variety. Syngenta’s malting barley breeding programme moved to RAGT in January of this year.

Treacy Creasy is one of the breeders and said Arrow will be a global variety.

It has been fully approved for distilling and provisionally for brewing; there was actually gluten-free Arrow beer available at Cereals.

It rates well on resistance to net blotch, too.

High septoria resistance

Another variety that caught my eye was Sparkler winter wheat.

It’s in trial in Ireland and has a high septoria resistance rating in England at 7.2 and a 7 for resistance to yellow rust. It has high tillering capacity and has consistent yields across regions and soil types in trials so far in the UK.

You can hear more from Cereals on last week's and this week’s Tillage Podcast wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen here.