United Kingdom
April 8, 2024
8 April 2024
Today (Monday 8 April), UK Flour Millers (UKFM) announced a decision to delay the confirmation of a Group 1 rating for the provisional Group 1 bread-making winter wheat variety SY Cheer.
Initially, confirmation of its Group 1 status was expected in the spring.
The UKFM news release states that further commercial scale testing is required before it can confirm SY Cheer’s Group 1 status.
AHDB is facilitating this testing by providing additional samples from Recommended Lists (RL) trials that are grown to a bread-milling specification.
It is hoped that this additional testing will be completed before the publication of the next edition of the RL (2025/26), which is due online in November.
Due to the delay, SY Cheer’s provisional status on the current (2024/25) RL remains unchanged.
UK Flour Millers news release
UK Flour Millers has announced a delay to confirmation of a Group 1 rating for the provisional Group 1 breadmaking wheat variety, SY Cheer.
In addition to the three years of assessments of trials, before a provisional Group 1 variety is confirmed as a full Group 1, it must also pass assessment of a large quantity of the variety grown to milling specification and milled at full commercial scale. The flour is shared with UK Flour Millers member companies who compare its performance against a control flour under a range of different baking regimes.
The results from these commercial tests proved inconclusive. As there is limited grain of SY Cheer grown to milling specification this season, the decision has been made to postpone the confirmation of SY Cheer as a Group 1 variety until harvest 2024, where more grain can be tested.
A coordinated programme of additional testing has been agreed between members of the UK Flour Millers Varieties Working Group, Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB), and the breeder of the variety, Syngenta. This additional testing will use wheat from Recommended List (RL) trials and commercially grown crops, and will be carried out in September 2024.
UK Flour Millers head of technical and regulatory affairs, Joe Brennan, said, “We will endeavour to provide clarity to the chain as soon as we can after testing samples from harvest 2024. This variety has shown some fantastic quality in previous testing and we hope this will be reaffirmed with the additional assessments. It is crucial that we communicate clearly with the chain so that farmers know which varieties are favoured by millers.”
He added, “Whilst it is disappointing we cannot confirm the full status of this variety sooner, this approach is not without precedent. Skyfall had to undergo the same raft of additional testing and as we all know, it emerged to become the most popular Group 1 variety for a number of years.”
About UK Flour Millers:
UK Flour Millers is the trade association representing the UK flour milling industry. We support our members by facilitating reliable, sustainable, and affordable supplies of wheat, providing training, promoting good practice in health and safety, advocating for the industry, and shaping and supporting long-term research and development. There are 32 member companies operating 51 flour mills. Millers use 5 million tonnes of wheat to make 4 million tonnes of flour each year. In a typical year, 80-85% of the wheat used by UK millers is homegrown and all will be assured under either Red Tractor or Scottish Quality Crops schemes.
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