“With maize costing around £800/ha to grow it is vital that farmers maximise the return on this investment,” comments Tim Richmond, Maize Manager, UK and Ireland with LG Seeds.

“Whether you are in a favourable or less favourable area, there are basically three core objectives.  The first is to grow a variety that will mature early on increasing the prospect of getting it harvested in good time and allow a successor crop to be established.  The second is to ensure to produce the best yield of high-quality feed, and finally you want feed available to include the diet as early as possible in the autumn.  All these are driven by variety selection.”

With big developments in plant breeding including improvements in feed parameters like Cell Wall Digestibility, Mr Richmond says there are big benefits from looking to grow some of the newer varieties on the list.

The LG Maize Variety Selection Guide 2020

The Maize Variety Selection Guide contains data on all the varieties on the 2020 BSPB/NIAB descriptive lists with data presented in easy to understand charts, allowing quick comparison between varieties.

Tables provide information on quality characteristics including cell wall digestibility and starch content, enabling choices to be made to maximise the total feeding quality of maize silage. Vital agronomic information such as lodging, maturity and early vigour data is also included.

“The objective is to choose the varieties best suited to the farm situation which will maximise the nutrients available to feed stock next winter,” he continues.

“When making the decision, farmers have to consider a wide range of factors including maturity date, agronomic factors, yield and quality which can make it a challenging decision with a significant range of varieties available. Getting the choice right can have a major impact on the quality and quantity of forage produced which will have a significant effect on performance and margins.”

He says the benefits of growing one of the best new varieties can be significant.  Prospect which combines early maturity for a reliable harvest with exceptional yields and feed value can produce an extra 2500 litres of milk per hectare compared to the average variety, giving an additional £700/ha return from the crop.

“New varieties like Trooper, Gema and Resolute also deliver an exceptional return while longer established varieties like Glory still allow farmers to make an excellent return by delivering high quality feed combined with early maturity.”

Download your copy HERE

A clearer focus on the reasons you grow maize and learning from the lessons of 2019 should form the basis of maize variety selection this season, according to Tim Richmond, Maize Manager, UK and Ireland with LG Seeds.

“As with any forage crop, the reasons for growing maize are solely about the feed produced,” Mr Richmond stresses. “The objectives of growing maize specifically are delivering a high yield of the most energy dense crop possible and ensuring it can be incorporated in diets as soon as possible in the winter, meaning it needs to be harvested in good time.

“Increasingly, aligned to this second objective is the need to be able to establish a successor crop. Variety choice is a principle driver for all these objectives.  By paying careful attention to the variety you can increase the prospects of a successful outcome.”

He says there are a number of risks that can be managed to improve the success of the crop. These include field selection, choosing fields with a better aspect and soil type and avoiding fields more prone to suffering in a wet season which increases the risk of harvesting problems.

Another risk that can be managed is poor establishment, by achieving rapid germination to get the crop away and growing quickly, while also minimising the risk of bird damage which will be more important with changes to the availability of the most commonly used bird repellents.

“Don’t select fields which may cause problems. You want a field where the soil can be worked down to a suitable tilth and then only drill when soil temperatures are consistently at a minimum 8°C at the depth the seed is to be sown, to get the seed germinated quickly. But make sure the variety you choose is suited to the farm.”

Mr Richmond says the biggest criteria determining success are usually maturity class and early vigour. He explains that early maturing varieties require fewer Ontario Heat Units to reach maturity, increasing the prospects that they will be harvested sooner in better conditions meaning silage can be incorporated into diets sooner too.

Try the heat unit calculator

“There is a 26-day spread between the earliest and latest maturing varieties on the BSPB/NIAB Descriptive List which can be the difference between harvesting in optimum conditions, producing a high-quality feed and struggling to get a crop in.

“Our unique OHU map available on our website allows you to see the average Heat Units for your postcode and so select varieties which will mature in time on your farm.

“Go for an early variety with good early vigour to make sure it gets away quickly and matures in good time.  Modern breeding techniques have effectively eliminated the traditional yield penalty seen with early varieties and feed quality is typically excellent, so there is little need to gamble on later maturing options.”

Widely grown varieties like Glory and Pinnacle are both maturity class 10 or FAO 190 and are high yielding with excellent starch and ME content, while newer varieties like Trooper, Echo and Gema also produce quality forage from an early variety, reducing the risk of a difficult harvest.

“Prospect which is another new variety has the early maturity for a reliable harvest and produces exceptional feed value.  The combination of high yields and exceptional ME content as a result of high starch and outstanding cell wall digestibility, means that it produces enough energy on average to produce 2500 litres per hectare more than the average variety, giving an additional £700 per hectare return in investment.

“Paying close attention to variety attributes and selecting the best variety for your circumstances will be an essential step in reducing risk when growing maize and ensuring you get a crop that really delivers,” Mr Richmond concludes.

In its first year on the BSPB/NIAB Descriptive Lists, Prospect is the first choice variety on both the Less Favourable and Favourable lists delivering exceptional performance across all the major attributes.

“Prospect represents the Holy Grail of maize breeding being the first early variety to produce such high feed quality, making it the perfect variety for farmers across the country wanting to maximise the return on investment in maize” comments Tim Richmond, LG Seeds maize manager in the UK and Ireland. “It delivers fantastic agronomy and tremendous yields with the combination of high starch and outstanding cell wall digestibility to make full use of the total energy available in the plant.”

He explains that Cell wall digestibility (CWD) is a measure of the extent to which animals are able to digest plant fibre. The higher the CWD, the better the potential feed value of the plant. The part of the cell walls that give the plant structural strength that prevents it from collapsing is lignin which is indigestible and produced in greater quantities as the plant matures. As lignin content increases, CWD declines.

“As a consequence many very early varieties do not have particularly high CWD values, but with Prospect our breeders have managed to neutralize the impact of increasing lignin as the plant matures, enabling it to maintain exceptionally high CWD.

“It provides the high quality forage farmers require and plenty of it. It produces 13000MJ/ha more than the average variety on the Less Favourable sites list which equates to an additional 2360 litres of milk per hectare from forage, worth around £680 per hectare.”

Prospect is an early variety with maturity class 9 (or FAO 160) meaning it is suitable for all maize growing sites. It combines excellent early vigour and good standing power with good eyespot tolerance and fusarium resistance meaning it will deliver in the field. But the difference will really be seen in the clamp and in the feed trough.

It is the top variety on the Less Favourable site list for dry matter yield, cell wall digestibility, starch yield, ME content and ME yield. On Favourable sites it is the highest ranked early variety, topping the list for cell wall digestibility, ME content and ME yield.

“Some later varieties may aspire to match Prospect on quality, but they have limited appeal. In many parts of the country there are simply not enough heat units available to allow these later varieties to reach maturity meaning they will fail to deliver fully on feed quality. With the environmental and agronomic drivers for early varieties, Prospect will allow growers across the country to have their cake and eat it, producing high yields and quality combined with early maturity.”

To download a copy of our New Maize Variety Selection Guide 2020, please click here, or on the image below…

Decisions made in the next few weeks will have a big impact on the success of maize crops, according to Tim Richmond, Maize Manager for Limagrain.

“With rebuilding forage stocks high on the list of priorities for many dairy farms, getting the optimum variety of maize off to the best possible start will be especially important,” he says.  “An extra 10ha of maize grown as a one-off crop could produce around 450-550 tonnes of additional forage, helping to ensure good stocks through next winter and for 2020 buffer feeding.

“It is possible to drill maize successfully up to the end of May which means there is still time to incorporate a crop into rotations. For example, it could be drilled after an early first cut has been taken to maximise the impact on stocks.”

While many farmers have already ordered their maize seed, he says others will soon have to make the decision and advises variety choice will be particularly important if crops will be late drilled.

Whether selecting maize to drill as soon as possible or later in the spring, Mr. Richmond says it is vital the crop delivers the yield and quality of forage required to support high levels of milk production. The starting point must be selecting a variety suited to the farm and conditions and this means selecting a variety that will mature in the available Ontario Heat Units (OHU).

OHU’s are the internationally recognised system to show if maize can be grown successfully in a particular location. If there are too few heat units, crops will struggle to mature which can lead to a number of problems.

“Varieties differ in the number of OHU’s they require to mature and it is important to choose varieties that will mature within the heat units typically achieved in your area. In general, early varieties require fewer heat units to mature successfully, making them suited to larger parts of the country and ideal for later drilling,” Mr. Richmond continues.

“This will be particularly important with late drilled crops as some of the potential OHU’s will have gone before the crop emerges.”

“We recommend looking for varieties which can be grown comfortably within the average units accumulated because years vary.”

The priority must be a crop that can be harvested on time, so it is better to err on the side of caution than to stretch the point and risk delayed maturity. This will also mean a successor crop can be established more quickly and prevent bare stubbles being over-wintered.

An online tool at www.lgseeds.co.uk/heat-map provides data on heat units by postcode, to help improve the precision of maize variety selection. It shows the 10 years average heat units across the country broken down into 5km blocks, using data collated by the Met Office.  Using the online system, farmers can more accurately manage the risk when choosing varieties.

He says varieties including Glory, Activate, Trooper, Prospect, and Emblem are suited to later drilling and will all deliver good yields of high-quality forage, even in a shortened growing season.

Mr. Richmond advises selecting varieties with good early vigour too, saying a strong, vigorous plant will establish quickly the essential root system and leaf canopy, maximising photosynthesis and suppressing weeds.

“The key to a good crop, irrespective of the variety, is ensuring good establishment to exploit the potential for early vigour,” Mr. Richmond comments. “Management must be focussed on achieving good germination and getting the crop away to a strong start. All varieties have a period of around 90-100 days between germination and flowering. It is during this time that the plant puts on all its vegetative growth, so it needs to be as vigorous and healthy as possible.

“Once the plant has flowered, it stops creating vegetative material and solely develops the cob. As the vegetative portion of the plant provides half the energy of the eventual crop, it is important to maximise this growth, especially if the variety has high digestible Neutral Detergent Fibre (NDF) which means more of this energy will be utilised when fed.

“What you have to avoid is the plant germinating and then sulking because of a poor seedbed or low soil temperatures. All this does is create a period in the crucial phase between germination and flowering when the opportunity for vegetative growth is lost.”

Mr. Richmond advises ensuring fields for maize are not suffering from compaction, explaining that as maize is a deep-rooted plant, any compaction will reduce the plants’ ability to reach water and nutrients which can stress the crop, delaying maturing and reducing yield while also stunting cob size.

He advises leaving final seedbed preparation when the top 5-10cm is worked to a fine tilth, until immediately prior to drilling, to preserve soil moisture.

“While soil moisture is important for germination, with maize, the key measurement is soil temperature. Cold soils are the enemy of a strong establishment. Avoid drilling until soil temperatures have achieved a minimum of 10°C and have been rising for at least four days. This gives a safety buffer in case soil temperatures drop back a bit, which can happen. For heavier soils, waiting for soils to warm up is even more critical. I would advise buying a soil thermometer so you can accurately assess what is happening.”

He says drilling into colder soils just reduces the extent and rate of germination. If in doubt – delay drilling, as the few days apparently lost will soon be recovered if plants get away quicker. Late frosts and heavy rain will both drop soil temperature so keep an eye on the weather and hold back from drilling if a cold or wet spell is forecast.

He advises checking whether seed supplied has been treated with Mesurol. This widely used and effective seed treatment is being phased out this year, so some varieties may be untreated. However, the treated seed will be available from LG Seeds throughout the spring.

“Mesurol is a very effective bird deterrent, so if the seed has not been treated it may be advisable to drill slightly deeper to reduce bird damage. On light soils in warm conditions, it may be possible to go as low as 10cm, but on heavier soil seed will struggle to emerge, so sowing should be to a maximum depth of 7cm. As long as the seedbed is well-prepared and warm enough, this will not impact on germination.

“Drilling early varieties into warm soils will ensure they have the best chance of getting away strongly, maximising vegetative growth and helping ensure a good yield of quality forage to help rebuild stocks,” Mr. Richmond concludes.