Farming: It’s time for a new look at hard wheat in distilling trade

It could be time for both Scottish farmers and the country’s distilling industry to take a fresh look at the possibility of making better use of high yielding, disease resistant hard wheat varieties rather than being solely focused on traditional soft varieties.

Grain whisky

“It’s not that hard wheat can’t be used for distilling, it’s more to do with spirit yield which the distillers can achieve,” said Limagrain’s arable technical manager, Ron Granger.

Speaking ahead of a recent field trials day at Perth he said that much of the work carried out on the suitability of hard wheats for distilling had been done ‘a long time ago’ and things had moved on considerably since then.

He added that it might well be time for the distillers to take another look at hard wheats and see where they stood for suitability.

Responding to a call from Professor Fiona Burnett at the recent Arable Scotland event for plant breeders to up their game and provide similar levels of disease resistance ratings available in hard wheats to soft varieties, he said that the new LG Sundance crosses offered hope on this front.

But Granger also suggested that Scottish farmers should challenge their current mindset and not necessarily rule out growing hard wheats.

“Like growers across the UK, Scottish farmers are not only looking for varieties with the highest out-and-out yield but are increasingly focusing on ones which will give them security of yield across a range of conditions, sites and seasons,” said Granger.

“But the focus on growing for the distilling market has led to a mindset which will only entertain soft varieties.

"And while this does give them the option of a dual outlet for their wheat, the feed market plays a huge role in Scotland and the better yields and resistances offered to diseases such as Septoria tritici by hard wheats can give real savings and additional flexibility in disease control.

"That’s a big plus, especially as integrated crop management practices become more widely adopted.”

His company’s hard variety, LG Typhoon, he said, offered considerable advantages to Scottish growers - as not only was it suitable for early drilling, but it also offered good disease resistance and high yields.

Speaking at a press briefing, Granger also welcomed the UK Government’s plans to simplify the regulations surrounding field trials of gene edited cereal varieties with a view to introducing the flexibility to grow them commercially.

“Europe has come to a bit of a standstill on this front,” he said, “but the UK undoubtedly has great potential along with the technical know-how and the scientists to take the lead on new precision breeding techniques – but we need the green light to see us off the starting blocks.”

However, he conceded that it was important that Europe also reconsidered its current stance, which applied the same tight restrictions to gene edited varieties as it did to old-school transgenic GMOs.

And he questioned if the resources would be made available by seed companies if the UK decided to go it alone in a direction which created barriers to marketing new varieties on the continent.