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Very High Yields In the absence of orange wheat blossom midge, as reported on the HGCA Recommended List, Welford has a yield of 103% of controls. Where wheat orange blossom midge is present, yields can be 120% of controls. The highest yields coming in the East (dry) regions and from high fertility sites where it's short stiff straw is advantageous.
Agronomic characteristics - the stiffest strawed variety Very little lodging seen over the last three years. UK Recommended List scores of 9 for resistance to lodging with PGR and 9 without PGR - the stiffest strawed variety available. Very Short Strawed At 78cms Welford is one of the shortest strawed varieties. Earliness of Ripening Medium. About a day later than Claire. Overwinter Growth Habit Welford remains very prostrate over winter and is slow to start spring growth, making it ideal for very early September drilling. No Blossom Midge worries Welford has genetic resistance to orange wheat blossom midge proven by independent field trials over 4 years, where nil or negligible larvae numbers or damaged grains were seen. Yields of Welford where midge are present and not controlled are likely to be 20% or more above non-resistant varieties. Jon Oakley, Principal Entomologist of ADAS, has recently said that "we can safely say that more than half of the crops in 2004 were directly affected. Given the unpredictability of knowing which crops need treatment, it is probably closer to 90% of the nation's wheat crop on which wheat blossom midge would be an issue in variety selection". This would include virtually all crops in both the East and West regions of the UK.
Welford is best suited to the higher yielding, fertile situations where the characteristics of short, extremely stiff straw are an advantage. Drought prone soils are best avoided. Following this advice, excellent specific weights were recorded in most areas in 2005 with many samples of 78 to 80 kg/hl. This was consistent with TAG trial results which indicated specific weights, relative to other varieties, consistently higher than the HGCA Recommended List score. Good Harvestability Growers of Welford have fount the variety extremely easy to combine with Cambridgeshire Farms "harvesting more tonnes and cutting more area in a day compared with other varieties". The same ease of harvesting and speed of combining was noted by many Lincolnshire growers, for example Mr. Kevin Johnson farming near Grantham. Cheap to Grow and Farmer Friendly Cheap to grow with stiff straw and good disease resistance. Farmer friendly with ease of harvesting, and increasing in popularity due to its consistent farm performance in yield and sample quality. Parentage: CWW92/1 x FD 92054 All information is a partial extraction from the Elsoms seeds website and also the HGCA Recommended List 2007/8. See www.elsoms.com and also www.hgca.com for the full dataset
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