An oilseed rape grower has set a new unofficial world record in a yield competition, with the winning field averaging 7.2t/ha.

Kent grower Richard Budd scooped the top OSR prize at the annual awards meeting of the Yield Enhancement Network (Yen). Farmers Weekly‘s Yorkshire-based Farmer Focus writer Richard Wainwright was in second place with a gross output of 6.82t/ha.

Pete Berry, head of crop physiology at Adas, highlighted that the top three oilseed rape yields all exceeded 6.5 t/ha.

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“This is a tremendous achievement by these entrants, given that the seed filling conditions this year were restricted by dull and rainy weather in June.”

The average gross output yield across all the entrants in 2019 was more than 5 t/ha, compared with the national average seed yield this year of about 3.4 t/ha, he said.

Success was also seen with cereal yields being just short of the records achieved in 2015.

Lincolnshire grower Mark Stubbs had the top-yielding cereal crop with a field achieving 16.3t/ha.

The winning spring barley grower also delivered a double-digit yield, with Alex Wilcox hitting 10.7t/ha in Norfolk.

Adas senior research scientist Sarah Kendall said that the winning spring barley was a crop of Laureate, which had a grain N of 1.8%. “On average, YEN entrants achieved 8.1 t/ha, more than 2 t/ha above the UK farm average.”