Winter wheat drilling is forecast to recover strongly this autumn, with the area set to be up by as much as 30% as growers are tempted to sow early after a wet drilling campaign in 2023.

Kirsty Richards, conventional crops product manager at plant breeders KWS, is expecting the area of wheat drilled to push up towards 1.9m hectares, dependent on the weather.

“All roads lead to drilling winter wheat this autumn, and growers are likely to go early but being mindful of the increased risk of disease and blackgrass,” she told Farmers Weekly after a group briefing at Cereals 2024 at Newnham, near Baldock in Hertfordshire.

See also: Cereals 2024: Winter barley offers resistance to key virus

Kirsty said the top five wheat varieties for autumn 2024 are likely to stay unchanged from last autumn, with her group’s Dawsum and Extase again leading the field, followed by Champion and then two breadmaking varieties, Skyfall and Crusoe.

Dawsum’s leading share of the market might fall to about 16% for harvest 2024 from 20%, but Kirsty pointed out the variety has the advantages that it can be drilling early and has a high specific weight, especially important given the cloudy June skies.

“A dull June often means bad specific weights, and Dawsum, as a Costello-cross, has a good specific weight,” she added. Dawsum has the second-highest specific weight on the current AHDB Recommended List at 79.9kg/hl, after Costello on 81.1kg/hl.

Extase’s market share is also likely to drift down from the current season’s 16% towards 10%, as the top three varieties could lose some market share to newcomers such as Beowulf and Bamford.

The UK winter wheat area for harvest 2024 is forecast to have fallen 15% to 1.46m hectares, the smallest area since 2020, according to the AHDB Early Bird survey, down from 1.72m hectares at harvest 2023.

Grain traders forecast a UK wheat harvest of 9-11m tonnes, comparable to the 2020 harvest of 9.66m tonnes, but down from the 2023 harvest of 13.98m tonnes and way below the record UK wheat harvest, 17.23m tonnes in 2008.