The first three winter oilseed rape varieties marketed under the LSPB banner have already proved popular this autumn and the breeder is confident that they will go on to take a sizable part of the 2011 seeds market.

Cracker, Palace and Sesame are candidates in the east and west region this year. However, no new recommendations for 2010 candidate varieties will be made in the north this year because of a lack of data. Poor establishment led to most of the 2009 trials being abandoned in the region, leaving only one year of National List data to support the RL trial data.

Theo Labuda, managing director of LSPB, said the three new varieties signalled the start of a new generation of successful oilseed rape varieties from NPZ Lembke and Serasem breeding programmes. Small quantities of each were commercially available for this season, but had already sold out, he said.

“They have a chance of becoming classics in the winter oilseed rape market in the future.”

On a tour of NPZ Lembke’s Norddeutsche Pflanzenzucht site, in Hohenlieth, Germany, head of plant breeding Dr Martin Frauen outlined the benefits these varieties could bring to UK growers.

Sesame, bred by Seracem, is a good all-purpose conventional variety which can be grown anywhere in the UK. In National List Trials in 2008 and 2009, it topped gross output at 117% of the control varieties in the east and west and 112% in the north.

It has good resistance to lodging (8), stem stiffness (7) and good disease resistance for light leaf spot (7) and stem canker (6).

Cracker is an NPZ hybrid variety with resistance to club root and light leaf spot disease. It could prove particularly valuable for growers in the north with club root problems.

NL trials have shown that Cracker is about 10% higher yielding than Mendel. It is the only other variety with club root resistance, scoring 118% for gross output in the north. “Club root can be a problem in some UK growers’ fields, especially in close rotations. If you have it once in the field, you never get it out,” Mr Labuda said.

Mr Labuda believed Cracker would replace Mendel in Scotland and the north of England as it offered better light leaf spot resistance in an area where it is a problem, as well as the extra yield.

Further south, he admitted that take-up of Cracker would be less pronounced, as it had poorer phoma resistance than Mendel.

The third key variety is Palace, another hybrid. It had a top-yielding gross output of 129% in National List trials for 2008 in the north – 17% above any other variety. But the figure needed to be treated with some caution as it was based on only two trials.

In the east and west, Palace came third in the trials, scoring 107% for gross output. With scores of eight for light leaf spot and six for stem canker in two years of NL trials, Palace also offers good disease resistance.

Palace had been primarily targeted for the North because of its strong light leaf spot resistance and yields, said Mr Labuda. However, its high yield and good all-round disease control would also make it well suited for the east and west, he added.

Dr Frauen said Palace was an example of a high-yielding hybrid with good oil content. “Previously we found it hard to produce a hybrid with good oil content because you needed good oil content on both the mother and the father side. With Palace, we have managed to do this.”

NPZ is in the process of developing next generation club root and light leaf spot resistant hybrid varieties and other speciality oil types for the UK market.