New maize contender

Grown alongside benchmark variety Destiny by more than 20 milk producers across the Midlands and Wales last season, Ixxes is emerging as the strongest contender Wynnstay has seen in its mainstream forage maize market in many years, delivering just the combination of earliness, yield and starch content growers are looking for.

Two years of NIAB testing show Ixxes - from RAGT Seeds' established European breeding programme - has an average DM of 37.36 per cent putting it in Maturity Class 9/10

This is combined with yields a good 13 per cent better than either Class 9 Destiny or Class 10 Avenir under favourable conditions - eight per cent and 11 per cent ahead of them respectively under less favourable conditions.

Add to this the marked starch content advantage over Destiny apparent in Wynnstay analyses last year and the variety is certainly delivering the goods, believes arable sales manager, Dr Simon Pope.

Especially so because the performance differences come from real farm-scale comparisons with the same growing and harvesting practices.

"We are responsible for around 10,000 acres of maize throughout Wales, across the Cotswolds and into Derbyshire as well as throughout our West Midlands heartland," he stresses.

"Because our customers rely on us for far more than just seed we never recommend varieties until we have confidence in their consistency across seasons as well as locations.

"That's why we've continued with varieties like Crescendo and Destiny in our primary Maturity Class 8 and 9 market for so long. Together these two varieties probably account for 60 per cent of our maize area.

"We always approach new varieties with caution, growing small amounts across as wider a range of conditions as we can alongside existing benchmark varieties.

"For the vast majority of our growers we're looking for the consistency we know Destiny will give us - a good 16-18 t/acre at 32-33 per cent DM, 30-35 per cent starch from a late April to early October growing season," explains Simon Pope.

"Against this yardstick, we've seen too many varieties that simply don't stack up. Ixxes, on the other hand, has particularly impressed us over the past two seasons".