Growers can expect more detailed variety information and some new scores – including verticillium wilt ratings for oilseed rape – when the AHDB Recommended List (RL) review process is completed, Farmers Weekly has learned.

During the first phase of the review process, some 900 responses to the questionnaire were received and supplemented by the results of more detailed discussions from focus groups and stakeholder interviews.

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Importantly, three-quarters of the responses came from farmers, revealed Dr Jenna Watts, AHDB’s head of crop health and IPM, who acknowledged the need for the list to keep developing as priorities and farming systems change.

“Our initial results confirmed that growers still value the list, really want new varieties and are increasingly focused on pest and disease resistance.

“They also stressed that they need data on variety performance under lower input systems, as well as regional detail and some new attributes,” she said.

A surprising conclusion was that the number of varieties on the RL is about right – a finding that growers and industry experts have since queried, especially as some recommended varieties have no seed available.

“As much as 80% of the farmer response supported current variety numbers,” reported Jenna. “It was our other stakeholders that had a more mixed opinion.”

She added that the fungicide and nutrition programmes used in the RL trials were queried, with the respondents keen for those programmes to be more closely aligned to current farm practice.

“They also highlighted that they were still interested in non-RL varieties, so we hope to be able to give them access to some of our archive data.”

Another request was to be able to compare varieties side by side – something that the RL app could do in future.

Providing there’s enough data, verticillium wilt scores for oilseed rape varieties should be on the RL this autumn, she revealed.

“Autumn vigour scores are proving more difficult to nail down.”

Otherwise, final decisions on what additional information the lists will contain will be made by the end of the year, with the changes being phased in gradually after that, she confirmed.