LG Beowulf Still Performs in a Dry Season

The hard Group 4 variety, LG Beowulf, has been a stand-out performer of harvest 2026 so far at Dennington Hall Farms, a 1,600 ha regenerative farming business in East Suffolk.

Despite the exceptionally hot, dry spring and summer, the 100 ha block of LG Beowulf, all grown as a second wheat, averaged 9.5 t/ha, with some areas achieving nearer 10.5 t/ha over the weighbridge, according to farm manager, Ryan McCormack. Specific weight was also very good, at 80-82 kg/hl.

“It looked well through the season, but we were never expecting to get record-breaking yields given the weather. The high temperatures we saw during flowering (33-35 C) had a massive impact, as did the drought, which made many crops drop a few tillers.

“So to have 100 ha of LG Beowulf average 9.5 t/ha and some areas do a tonne more than that, it is definitely a variety that has stood out for us this year.”

Limagrain’s arable technical manager, Ron Granger, says LG Beowulf has consistently demonstrated good performance over multiple seasons and variable growing conditions, retaining both yield and specific weight, even when the weather is more challenging.

“The big, bold grain can add weight to a crop which is especially important with the changeable seasons we’ve been experiencing,” he notes.

“LG Beowulf combines most of the desirable traits that farmers are looking for in a hard feed wheat, including high yield potential, stiff straw, good septoria resistance, excellent grain quality and OWBM resistance.”

Ron Granger highlights the consistent performance and grower appeal of LG Beowulf.

A key strength is its flexibility to perform across all UK regions and soil types, from light to heavy land, sowing timings (early, normal, or late), and rotational positions – it is equally suited to first, second or continuous wheat situations, he says.

While LG Beowulf, like many commercial varieties, is now susceptible to the newer yellow rust strain Yr15, careful monitoring and timely fungicide use will allow it to continue to perform at its best, he adds.

This season, Mr McCormack says his fungicide and fertiliser spend has been lower across the board, largely due to the dry weather, which allowed him to use more cost-effective chemistry to manage yellow rust risk at T0 and T1, and make further savings on later treatments.

“Altogether we spent around £94/ha on fungicides across the wheats,” he says. “In terms of fertiliser, most received around 170 kg N/ha in total, front-loaded towards the beginning of the season in anticipation of conditions turning dry, with 40 kg N/ha applied towards the end of May.”

Overall, with harvest around half-way through at the time of writing, the farm’s average yield across all winter wheats is 8.6 t/ha, which is around 10% down on normal due to the weather, Mr McCormack says.

“However, with a relatively low spend on inputs, if we can achieve somewhere closer to a 9 t/ha average across the 700 ha of wheat, I’ll be very pleased.”

Ryan McCormack has been impressed with the performance of LG Varieties throughout Harvest 2026.

This coming autumn, Mr McCormack plans to grow LG Beowulf again, alongside LG Rebellion, LG Defiance, and LG Lotus.

“It’s the first year we’ve grown LG Lotus, and we only had a small 10 ha area, which was part of the Defra-funded ADOPT trial, Roots of Change (ROC), but it averaged 10.23 t/ha, which I was again very pleased with.”

Likewise, his Crusoe, also part of the ADOPT trial, performed well too, coming in above the farm’s average at 9.5 t/ha.

Elsewhere, Mr McCormack is pleased with how his LG Defiance and LG Rebellion have performed in the farm’s low-input regenerative system, which involved direct drilling both varieties into a summer catch crop, and tailoring nitrogen and other inputs based on crop sampling through the season.

The LG Defiance averaged just above the farm’s overall average, while LG Rebellion was slightly below, however given the reduced inputs on these crops, their gross margin came in at a healthy £1,250/ha.

Find out more about LG varieties for the coming autumn at https://lgseeds.co.uk/.