With 75% of the wheat and the overwhelming majority of the quality crops in his immediate area safely in the barn, John Hill of Peterborough-based Dalmark Grain reports milling wheats with much improved proteins, in particular, this harvest.

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Coupled with reasonable bushel weights and Hagbergs, he sees this extra quality as very encouraging for the marketability of what is shaping-up to be a sizeable national crop in spite of last autumn’s establishment challenges and the early season drought experienced across much of the Eastern Counties.

“Milling wheats are coming in with proteins an encouraging 0.5-0.75 percentage points up on last year, as a rule,” he explains. “This is providing an especially welcome boost to Group 2 crops which generally don’t get the quality-focused agronomic attention of the Group 1s.

“Indeed, it’s putting the best Group 2s – Marksman and Cordiale – at least on a par with Group 1 benchmark, Solstice as far as basic milling specifications are concerned.

“Marksman’s clearly the pick of the Group 2 bunch this year,” points out John Hill. “As well as very good proteins, it’s delivering exceptional yields for many of our growers. Most have been bringing in well over 4t/acre (9.9 t/ha) and, I know for a fact that several crops have done this from pretty mediocre land to boot.

“The fact that it and Cordiale are particularly early ripeners has again been very valuable in securing the sort of quality we need under another set of challenging harvest conditions.”

While the better overall milling wheat quality certainly hasn’t done any favours for premiums, John Hill stresses it’s very important for the current crop’s marketability. Which will really help in ensuring the best value homes for Group 2 grain in our export as well as domestic markets.

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