Despite a decline in OSR hectarage, plant breeders haven’t stalled when it comes to delivering innovation

Perhaps ironically, as the UK OSR area reaches its lowest point for some years, varieties are at their absolute best, believes Agrii arable seed specialist, David Leaper.

“The breeders have put a phenomenal amount of work into stacking traits, bringing different disease resistances together and improving physical properties such as standing.

“Numerous trials have shown early developing varieties that are able to cope with difficult establishment conditions and grow away quickly in the autumn cope best with cabbage stem flea beetle. Good vigour in the spring also helps to avoid problems at the larval stage,” he says.

DSV’s Sarah Hawthorne agrees, saying resilience of varieties has been a key company priority for many years. “That all-important vigour, plant architecture and ability to grow through pest and disease threats underpin much of our current OSR range with hybrid breeding at the heart of this.

“We continue to invest in genetics to further build resilience. DSV’s Phoma Blocker trait, for example, features a resistance mechanism completely new to Europe and is already featured in our varieties Cognac and Dompteur.

“The technology adds a much-required additional layer of security by the inclusion of LepR1 or RlmS to the widely used Rlm7 resistance,” she says.

In recent years, the breeder’s clubroot protection has also played an important role in keeping spread of the disease in check, adds Sarah. “We’ve been particularly successful in this area with varieties such as DSV Crocodile CR, and the new DSV variety Cromputer CR offers even greater protection.

“New OSR genetics have also been developed by DSV to improve harvest performance by building on traditional pod shatter characteristics. Our latest RL addition DSV Dolphin is the first of a new generation of hybrid varieties specifically developed to combine a key set of genetic traits to protect them against adverse weather conditions later in the season.

“All of these developments add to the future viability of OSR and allow growers to have greater faith in its ability to deliver high margins.”

This article was taken from the latest issue of CPM. For more articles like this, subscribe here.

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