A new, winter-active and highly vigorous variety of triticale is now available in the UK.
It offers all the forage options – early spring grazing, silage in April and wholecrop in late June.
Bred in New Zealand, T101 Wintermax has a recommended drilling window of mid-September through to mid-October for optimum spring production and has been shown in field trials to significantly out-yield forage rye.
“T101 Wintermax can be drilled later than traditional autumn sown forage crops and is an ideal option to follow maize, for example,” Francis Dunne of FD Seeds confirmed.
“It will establish very quickly and is extremely winter hardy, so offers good protection against soil erosion, and its nutrient use efficiency will help to minimise leaching over the winter months.
“The earliest drilled crops can provide the option of a light, late autumn grazing. But, for most, the main grazing period will be the end of February to mid-April.”
Alternatively, T101 Wintermax could provide a very early silage cut at the end of April, with similar nutritional quality to Italian ryegrass.
“It also has the potential to be left later and cut for wholecrop in June because it has a much higher grain content than forage rye,” Dunne continued.
“This very vigorous and high yielding forage crop has the potential to help livestock farmers reduce their reliance on bought-in feeds in early spring and, therefore, cut their costs of production.”
New triticale option for Ireland?
Dunne also confirmed that the new triticale option could soon be available on the Irish market.
“We believe that Wintermax has very good potential in Ireland. We have had good feedback from a farmer in south-west Wales on its performance in a similar climatic area to counties Cork, Waterford and Wexford.
“The key sowing window is September-October for early spring grazing or very early silage cut, prior to Maize.
“Because of the wet autumn in 2023, our main seed crops this year were not planted until December and January.
“They established very well despite continued wet weather. This highlighted the impressive resilience of the variety,” he added,
The company has said that it is in discussion with two distributors in Ireland to develop the variety, but nothing is confirmed at this stage.
Triticale is a hybrid of wheat and rye. The cereal ws first bred in laboratories during the late 19th century in Scotland and Germany.
Commercially available triticale is almost always a second-generation hybrid.
