New Sprinter Wheats which help decrease risk from delayed or later drilling through an extremely wide and flexible drilling window were demonstrated at a recent Agrovista AgX demonstration day at Lamport in Northamptonshire.

Choosing a Sprinter Wheat, so-called because of how they share both spring and winter wheat genetics, provided security in knowing that if a drilling window was missed the variety would still perform as expected when drilled later, even in late spring, unlike winter wheat varieties where there was a vernalisation requirement, explained Agrovista arable seed manager Ted Williams.

Similarly, most spring wheats were not successful when drilled in the autumn, he continued. “Sprinter wheats, bred by German breeder Strube, now part of RAGT, are genetically different to most other winter wheats and can be drilled from mid-October to as late as any traditional spring wheat.

“While they have no vernalisation requirement, they are still winter hardy,” he stressed.

The first Sprinter Wheat, the Group One milling wheat STR Pace, will be widely available within the seed trade this autumn.

Its characteristics made it suitable for growers looking to delay drilling for weed management or to minimise risk from barley yellow dwarf virus or septoria, as well as drilling after root or maize crops, or as a traditional spring wheat, Ted suggested.

Added to the AHDB Recommended List for spring wheats in 2025, STR Pace is just 1% lower yielding than traditional spring wheat KWS Harsum, while providing higher protein content (13.0%) and a specific weight of 80.6 kg/hl – the best of any spring wheat on the Recommended List.

That made it a very good option as a spring wheat, according to Ted, but it was equally at home as a late drilled autumn-sown variety.

While its earliest drilling date of mid-October makes it unsuitable for testing within the AHDB RL for winter wheat, Agrovista compared STR Pace with Skyfall, one of the commercially popular choices for late autumn drilling, at two AgX sites last season.

“At Lamport on heavy clay, STR Pace yielded nearly 1t/ha more than Skyfall from a November drilling, while on high yielding silt soils at Haddenham in Cambridgeshire the advantage was almost 0.6t/ha,” Ted says.

In the Agrovista “system” trials at Lamport, which test how rotations, cover crops, cultivations and weed control interact under high blackgrass pressure, STR Pace yielded significantly more than a competitor spring wheat, reaching 9 t/ha, he added.

Three years of UK Flour Millers testing has shown good gluten quality and baking performance, with good water absorption – a positive indicator for flour usability.

Nitrogen management to reach protein levels didn’t differ significantly from other varieties drilled at a similar time, particularly early drilled crops, Ted said. “Clearly, the earlier you drill, the more nitrogen will be required by virtue that it will yield more, so we would typically advise a standard fertiliser programme to a comparator variety, like Skyfall, drilled at the same time.”

A key attribute is its earliness. Later harvesting of spring wheat could put some growers off growing the crop, but STR Pace was particularly early, according to Ted. “Some of the seed growers have told us it is way earlier than its RL score of -1 compared with Mulika.”

In Agrovista trials, both November and spring drilled Sprinter Wheats had been harvested around the same time as winter wheat sown in early October, a good 10-14 days ahead of traditional spring wheat varieties, Ted concluded.