United Kingdom
January 30, 2025
With a second consecutive maize harvest significantly hampered by another wet autumn, growers should choose wisely to ensure their 2025 crop is ready to be harvested in good time.
That’s the advice from Tim Richmond, Maize Manager for Limagrain Field Seeds UK and Ireland, who explains that growers no longer have to sacrifice yield or crop quality in order to secure an early harvest.
“Maize breeding programmes have advanced significantly in recent years, with modern varieties such as Gema, Dignity and Skipper enabling growers to produce a high yielding crop in a shorter growing season,” Tim explains.
An early maturing variety like Duke can mitigate wet weather risks according to Limagrain’s Tim Richmond.
“Likewise, Duke – the latest ‘very early’ variety to come out of Limagrain’s extensive UK testing programme – also offers a significant improvement in terms of earliness of maturity, yield and quality in favourable and less favourable maize growing regions.”
Despite being one of the earliest maturity varieties on the 2024-25 BSPB/NIAB Descriptive List, Duke (which has an FAO of 140) delivers an exceptional dry matter yield of 18.1t/ha and combines this with very high quality.
“In fact, its starch yield of 6.96t/ha is the highest of all varieties on the Less Favourable list, and the highest of all Very Early varieties on the Favourable list,” Tim explains.
“Duke also has superior feed value thanks to its improved cell wall digestibility which increases its ME yield – something that is unusual for such an early variety. It also has good potential as a crimping or grain variety, and, thanks to its very early vigour and good standing ability, is less likely to be impacted by another wet year as it can be drilled later in the spring but will still be ready to harvest in good time.
“And, should the 2025 maize harvest be hampered by another bout of wet weather, Duke’s excellent disease resistance and stay green genetics will ensure it’s still in premium condition even if harvesting is delayed.”
Cover cropping and SFI potential
As well as enabling growers to exploit optimum harvesting conditions, Duke’s very early maturity also gives growers more time to establish a following crop.
Limagrain’s extensive testing and screening programme assesses all new varieties in UK conditions.
“Planting a winter cover crop after maize is now the recommended best practice, as it delivers important soil health benefits, but can also allow growers to access additional payments through the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI),” Tim continues.
“Italian Ryegrass and Westerwolds are proving popular as winter cover crops after maize, as are forage rye varieties such as Humbolt which performs well in most scenarios.”
Undersowing maize with a companion crop is another potential SFI payment opportunity, and it has the added benefit of ensuring the cover crop is already established when the maize comes off. “Undersowing does however need access to the right equipment and must be done at the correct timing to avoid the risk of affecting the primary crop’s performance,” Tim says.
“Alternatively, a multi-species cover crop such as Limagrain’s Lift n Fix combination of forage rye and common vetch will provide the ideal combination of a crop that mops up residual nutrients whilst fixing nitrogen for future cropping rotations.”
Further technical info and data
Learn more about our high performance maize varieties here or contact your usual seed merchant for availability
Download the Maize Variety Selection Guide here
About The Author
Topics
Species
