Quality, yield and resistance
Good yield for poor soils
Best sowing time flexibility
Hybrid for greater yield
The health grain
Anyone wanting to earn money with wheat on an arid site with a soil rating of 30-40 must really do their maths. This makes the strategy of Felix Hanssen from Wischer bei Stendal even more fascinating: For 10 years he has relied on hybrid wheat, which in the meantime is grown on almost 90 % of his winter wheat fields!
The oncoming amendments of the fertiliser regulations will not only be achieved by reducing application rates. Dr. Ute Kropf (FH Kiel), Department of Agriculture, explains that if nitrogen rates are already tightly calculated it is necessary to improve nitrogen use from applied fertiliser as well as soil reserves.
Deviations from the optimal sowing time and preceding crop are risky but cannot always be avoided. The SAATEN UNION production trials test sowing time tolerance, the suitability for mulch sowing and the performance as a wheat on wheat crop. To find the answers to these questions, there are varying tests during the production trials using different sowing times, preceding crops and soil processing techniques (Fig. 1). Crop protection and crop management are adjusted to the respective conditions and are the same for all the varieties.
How should nitrogen fertilisation take place when using conserving soil working techniques? A difficult question because arable land can look very different especially when a plough is not used. Dr. Konrad Steinert, LOP Landwirtschaft ohne Pflug (Agriculture without the Plough), explains the solutions.