Very high yielding Group 4 hard feed wheat

· Very stiff, short straw

· Suitable for early sowing

· Outstanding grain quality

· Excellent 2nd wheat

· Excellent eyespot resistance

· Good drought tolerance

A remarkably flexible variety, Humber is not only ideally suited to early sowing but will yield at the highest levels if sown through to December. Humber is also showing considerable promise as a second wheat.

With very high yield potential, good disease resistance, excellent straw and grain characteristics, Humber will achieve the highest outputs. In the field, crop husbandry is straightforward, Humber is a variety that is very easy to grow.

Ideal for all situations, soil types and rotations, Humber can be grown under the highest input regimes to maximise yield without lodging risk – as with all feed wheat varieties, the more you put in, the more it will reward.
With good winter dormancy, late primordia development and medium maturity, Humber is an ideal variety for early sowing. Short, very stiff straw demonstrates uniform, synchronous tillering which, combined with a lack of primary tiller dominance means Humber is a low risk, easy variety to manage from the earliest sowings.

Humber combines these benefits with excellent eyespot resistance, an increasing problem in early sown wheat.

Humber demonstrates exceptional yield potential on any soil type. Early or late sown, Humber is equally at home on heavy or light soils, on moisture retentive soils or where moisture stress can be expected.

Humber has consistently demonstrated a very reliable performance when grown as a second wheat. In CPB Twyford 2nd wheat trials, Humber has consistently out-performed varieties considered good in that rotational position. This performance has continued throughout National List and Recommended List Trials. Humber has the flexibility to be successfully grown in all rotational positions on farm – 1st wheat, 2nd wheat, early and later sown.

Agronomy

To achieve the best performance, Humber should be sown between early September through to December, although it can safely be sown until February. Humber can be sown from the 1st September or earlier in regions where autumn and spring growth is known to be slow.

From normal sowing dates aim to achieve a spring plant population of 220 – 250 plants/m 2 . Humber is a low to medium tillering variety and seed rate should take into account the sowing date and soil fertility.

Humber has good resistance to the major diseases as is demonstrated by a high untreated yield in Recommended List Trials. However to ensure the highest yields a full fungicide programme is advised. In very high pressure situations, a specific treatment for mildew may be required.

Grain

Humber produces very marketable grain that is not only bold, plump and bright, but has a very high specific weight and Hagberg Falling Number.

Straw

Short and very stiff straw allows use of very high inputs to exploit the yield potential of Humber without risk of lodging. A routine growth regulator should be applied at GS 31 particularly on very fertile soils, but Humber is unlikely to respond to further PGR applications.

All information is a partial extraction from the cpb-twyford website and also the HGCA Recommended List 2007/8. See www.cpb-twyford.co.uk and also www.hgca.com for the full dataset