LS Plant Breeding varieties take top spots in the new AHDB recommended list for winter oilseed rape

Date:11-29-2022

The new AHDB Recommended List (RL) for winter oilseed rape sees LSPB’s newly-added Turing as the top yielding variety, along with two other new varieties – Murray and Vegas – giving the breeder a total of three varieties in the top five of the RL, and springboarding the breeder back into the limelight for winter oilseed rape.

Chris Guest, LS Plant Breeding Ltd (LSPB) Managing Director, comments: ″we are delighted to be able to offer growers these three top-of-the-list varieties across the regional areas of the UK (both East/West and North regions), with the variety Zidane joining the  winter oilseed rape candidate list, as well as stablemates Flemming and Respect maintaining their position on the RL for the East/West region.″

Chris Guest in trials of Turing oilseed rape

The varieties underline the results of innovation in the company’s breeding programme bringing restored hybrids with the high resistance to Stem canker from the new major gene Phoma resistance RlmS – benefiting varieties such as Murray and Vegas, with very high disease ratings, alongside excellent light leaf spot resistance.

Turing is an exciting addition to the recommended list – with excellent yield potential, backed up with robust light leaf spot resistance – and outstanding autumn and spring vigour.

Stem health is a key component of our new genetics – and we see this as a large driver to high yield potential and robust plant health, which also gives good tolerance to late season diseases including verticillium wilt.

The RL also highlights the continuing important place for growers occupied by LSPB’s clubroot resistant variety Crome with a Specific Recommendation (Sp) for the UK for growing on land infected with common strains of clubroot.  

For specialist markets, LSPB offer Resort, the only high erucic acid (HEAR) variety on the AHDB Described List, fulfilling a market need for use in industrial processes. HEAR varieties can potentially offer considerable premiums over conventional double low varieties.

Chris Guest adds, ″these results are a testament to our oilseed rape breeding programme backed by our parent company NPZ, and breeding colleagues both here in the UK and in the wider European network, which has seen the introduction of the new RlmS gene in recent years as well as TuYV resistance.

″For the future, we have varieties progressing through the trials system featuring stacked traits as we continue to strive for the best hybrids with improved yield and agronomics added to consistency in performance.″