Despite being referred to as our “quiet season”, this is quite the misnomer! Whilst not spending much time in the field during the winter, the team here know all too well how quickly the months pass by – it’ll soon be harvest again! Before that, we need to process our harvest samples for quality assessments (rheological and baking performance) as well as sow our advanced lines for assessing vernalisation requirement. We are also busy planning our crosses for the coming year – crossing is one of the most exciting activities in a breeding programme, full of varietal promise for the years ahead! A lot of work goes into planning which combinations of genetics will complement each other and which genetic traits we can target and track through the system.
We are also looking at establishment and vigour – I’d like to share this photo with you which shows how much vigour and therefore green leaf coverage our latest variety, Champion, has compared to other RL varieties.
A belated Happy New Year to you all from the wheat breeding team at DSV UK.
