The UK wheat harvest could be the highest for six years helped by good growing weather, with crop experts hoping for plenty of July sunlight.

Sunny conditions in July with day temperatures not too high should help push up yields and a final harvest to well above 15m tonnes.

“With a bright July there should be the potential for high yields,” says Roger Sylvester-Bradley, head of crop performance at crop scientist group Adas.

He adds that the wheat crop looks well set up and there is a need for bright weather, cool nights and no July heatwave in the current grain-filling period to fulfil the crop’s potential.

Adas is optimistic over the crop’s yield promise given good plant growth, reasonable disease control and adequate moisture, although blackgrass is an issue in some crops.

Crops are generally healthy in Lincolnshire with yields only held back by scattered signs of take-all disease, bad blackgrass infestations and patches where fungicides sprays have missed.

“Crops look pretty good but they need some sunshine and not to be burnt off by too hot weather,” says Christine Lilly, technical manager at distributors Frontier.

She says brown rust is creeping into some crops further south in the Cambridgeshire area, where yellow rust and septoria is still seen.

Grain traders are edging their estimates of the wheat harvest ahead as they sees yields looking promising although prices are under pressure from a potentially big continental European crop.

Jonathan Lane, trading manager at Gleadell, says yields look to be good due to the ideal growing conditions.

“I believe a 15.4m tonne crop will not be unreasonable given the near ideal growing conditions,” he says.

A 15.4m tonne crop would be the highest wheat crop since 2008’s record crop of 17.2m tonnes, and well ahead of last year’s 11.9m tonne harvest.

He says reports of a good early start to the European harvest is putting pressure on prices, with feed wheat for November below £140/t ex-farm.

Philip Darke, managing director of the UK’s biggest storage co-operative Camgrain, says wheat crops look good across its trading area from the Welsh borders to the East coast.

“The potential of the crop is shown by it coming into ear about 10 days earlier than normal,” he says.

The group, based near Cambridge, takes in about 500,000t of combinable crops into its four stores annually and expects the rapeseed harvest to get under way next week.

Jack Watts, senior analyst at the HGCA, says there is potential for a good wheat crop and prospects for the harvest look good.

“With the current rain and sunshine and a long grain-filling period, there is growing optimism towards the crop,” he says.