Maize Breeding and Trials

Maize growers in the UK can rest assured that major benefits will follow as a result of our access into Limagrain’s European breeding programme, with significant advances in relation to new varieties. There is no doubt that farmers in the UK will benefit from our market leading position as a result of investment including:

• An even stronger team – a Limagrain breeder dedicated to selecting varieties for the UK and a new maize specialist based at our Witham St Hughs premises.
  
• Limagrain genetics will inject new genetic variation into the breeding programme.
  
• The size of the trials programme has doubled and the number of new hybrids under test has tripled.
  
• The whole programme is designed to run faster so that promising material can be fast-tracked into official trials so they can be commercialised at the earliest opportunity.
  
• The all-important quality assessment will be instant as it will be undertaken on the trials harvester rather than in the laboratory

The proof of the pudding in any breeding programme is the successful trialling and subsequent launch of new varieties. For 2010 we have two new varieties on the NIAB Descriptive List for Forage Maize – Artist and LG31.81. You can find out more about these (and the other well established varieties in our portfolio) by navigating to the Variety Portfolio section.