Sugar beet growers have six new varieties to choose from for the 2025-26 season, including a higher-yielding option with tolerance to some of the yellowing viruses.

The new 2026 Recommended List also sees the first herbicide-tolerant variety which also has tolerance to beet cyst nematode, offering farmers with a nematode problem another option for managing weed beet.

Last week, the British Beet Research Organisation published the 2026 Recommended List, which gives farmers a total of 23 varieties for spring 2026 drilling.

These include a greater number of special traits to help farmers tackle industry challenges like virus yellows disease.

See also: How soil testing can tackle sugar beet cyst nematode

Three of the six newcomers are from Belgium-based breeder SESVanderHave. Antler and Gadwall are high-yielding conventional varieties, while Hoopoe brings another option with beet cyst nematode resistance.

All three varieties qualify for early drilling.

Antler is the highest-yielding newcomer at 100.6t/ha (adjusted), making it the second- highest on the list after Limagrain’s BTS1915 at 101.4t/ha. Gadwell is slightly behind on 99.4t/ha.

Swedish breeder Hilleshög makes a return to the Recommended List with Aslan which is another high-yielding (97.3t/ha) conventional variety suitable for early drilling.

The first new addition from KWS for 2026 is Generosa, which joins Marushca as the breeder’s second variety that is tolerant to some of the viruses that cause virus yellows in sugar beet.

This provides an improvement in yield performance over Marushca (87.3t/ha v 92.6t/ha adjusted).

BBRO says this is a further step towards decreasing the yield impact of virus yellows.

Stacked traits

As a first for the Recommended List, KWS has added the first variety that combines beet cyst nematode tolerance with herbicide tolerance.

Smart Nelda is a Conviso Smart sugar beet variety, which is a collaboration between plant breeder KWS and agrochemical specialist Bayer Crop Science.

It consists of two components – an actolactate synthase (ALS) inhibitor herbicide-tolerant sugar beet variety and a specially developed post-emergence herbicide known as Conviso One (foramsulfuron + thiencarbazone).

The growing system offers farmers a way of overcoming a serious weed beet problem and this option is now available for fields that also have a known beet cyst nematode risk. 

Another change is the status of Stube’s Tweed. The variety originally joined the 2025 list as a conventional variety.

However, Tweed now becomes an SY2 (recommended for specific use) with the addition of a virus yellows trait claim.

As with previous years, all trait claims are based on external data outside the RL trials. This is assessed by the expert panel for robustness and then approved by the Crop Committee.

Future changes

All growers and advisers will have been frequently reminded of the importance of the ‘X’ on the list with early sown bolter trials providing data to not drill certain varieties before mid-March to mitigate the risk of bolting.

For 2026, a purple ‘X’ can now be seen, this recommendation is from the breeder and does not relate to bolter numbers.

The advice relates to Smart varieties only and reflects the stewardship advice for herbicide tolerance.