Improved plant genetics will play a key role in determining the future sustainability of Ireland’s tillage sector.
A lot of tillage farmers are complaining about the weather at the present time and rightly so. But, in all honesty, things could have been a lot worse.
Take oilseed rape as a case in point. Improvements in varietal performance have brought about massive improvements in crop output potential.
We saw this last year with growers achieving yields in the region of 2t/ac, pretty much across the board.
This figure has dropped to around 1.6t in 2023. But given conditions that prevailed for most the 2022/2023 growing year, this reduction should not come as that great a shock for farmers.
Improved plant genetics
However, one other step forward, where oilseed rape is concerned, has been the development of pod shatter-resistant varieties.
As a consequence, crops have managed to retain the vast bulk of their yield potential, desite the altering of the heavy rains that fell for all of July.
Genomic improvement is also impacting across the cereal sector. The advent of Barley Yellow Dwarf Virus (BYDV)-resistant and tolerant varieties is now widely available to Irish growers.
And no doubt, additional genomic-driven improvements in cereal variety performance will be coming through at an exponential rate over the coming years.
Forage maize
But perhaps the greatest success story of the 2023 crop growing year has yet to fully unfold.
I am told that crops of forage maize are in tremendous shape at the present time.
Factors coming into play here include the use of new, compostable films and, more importantly, the breeding of new maize varieties – specifically suited to our more northern climes.
Plant breeding companies, including the likes of Pioneer, have specifically committed to developing varieties of forage maize that suit the growing conditions that are found in Northern Europe and Scandinavia.
Moreover, crop output levels would be fully maintained. This means that crops of maize would still be delivering up to 18t/ac of fresh forage with dry matters and starch levels both coming in at circa 30%.
And Ireland is benefitting as a consequence of these developments.
We could well see crops of forage maize planted in late April and harvested in late September becoming the norm in this country.
Gone would be the days of trailing heavy equipment around water-logged fields in the depths of autumn.
Instead, tillage farmers could work on the basis of forage maize becoming an integral part of their normal crop rotations, thereby allowing fields to be fully utilised on a year-round basis.