Plant breeder NPZ UK held a Field Day to celebrate 20 years since they were founded in the UK. During the event, groups of growers and members of the seed trade toured plots of the company’s current and candidate varieties followed by presentations of breeding techniques and methods by the NPZ UK team.

The oilseed rape plots featured the company’s top of the Recommended List (RL) variety Maverick along with the others in the company’s strong winter oilseed rape portfolio. This includes newcomer Crusoe – featuring a step change in clubroot resistance for oilseed rape varieties – and Eriksen, a HEAR candidate variety that lifts the yield bar for high erucic varieties.

The current PGRO Descriptive List (DL) for spring beans features Ketu and Futura, two NPZ UK low vicine and convicine varieties (LVC), with the LVC character seen as the way to expand the bean market with end users.

For combining peas, Concerto and Orchestra are major yellow varieties, while the green pea list is headed by Pangea, closely followed by our varieties Carrington, Butterfly and Bluetime.

NPZ UK has three marrowfat pea varieties on the PGRO DL with Midori the strong leader, exceeding yields of older varieties by a substantial margin. 

Mylo spring wheat is on the AHDB RL and a success that results from the company’s varietal development work with other breeders. 

NPZ UK’s Michael Shuldham summed up the day by explaining that NPZ UK is the UK subsidiary of German plant breeding company  Norddeutsche Pflanzenzucht GMBH (NPZ) which is a global leader in oilseed and pulse breeding with over 125 years of plant breeding experience in their history.

‘NPZ is a leading breeder of oilseed rape, field beans and combining peas with a long track record of breeding successful varieties for the UK grower. 

“Together we have a history of bringing innovation to the UK farmer and our philosophy is to keep the best of a traditional approach, while investing in the latest technologies in plant breeding,” Mr Shuldham added.