For over 50 years, Germains have been delivering innovative sugar beet seed treatments to support the UK Sugar Beet industry.
Today, Germains continue to invest in the research and development of pioneering products designed to deliver higher yields, and demonstrated through our Grower Engagement Trials programme.
These trials give UK growers the opportunity to sample some of our newest treatments currently in development at our UK R&D site, which is dedicated to developing new sugar beet treatments.
This allows us to obtain valuable feedback from growers on the performance of the seed technology on a commercial scale, whilst simultaneously giving growers the earliest insight to our most advanced technologies.
2017 Grower Engagement Trial Plan
This year’s trial included three growers from each of the four British Sugar factory areas (Wissington, Cantley, Bury St. Edmunds and Newark), allowing us to eliminate any field variation and to gain a fair representation of the crop’s performance.
Each grower received three units of seeds each:
1. Control treatment: Xbeet® plus
2. Potential new treatment 2: Xbeet® enrich200
3. Potential new treatment 3: Xbeet® enrich300
Emergence Count Results
After drilling, the Germains team recorded three counts at each site at first, 50% and final emergence.
A national average was taken across all twelve trial sites.
These emergence results demonstrate that Xbeet® enrich300 performed consistently better relative to the Xbeet® plus control treatment at each counts 1, 2 and 3.
At final emergence, Xbeet® enrich300 achieved a 20% higher count than Xbeet® plus.
Cyclops Assessment Results
Post the emergence counts, a Cyclops assessment was completed.
This assessment is used to measure the leaf area of the plants, allowing us to monitor the effects of our new technologies on the early growth of the sugar beet.
The 2017 national results highlight that Xbeet® enrich300 performed a 14% greater average leaf area than Xbeet® plus.
This was followed by Xbeet® enrich200, which achieved a 10% greater leaf area than the control treatment.
2017 Cyclops ResultsGermains’ R&D Trial Results
The Grower Engagement Trials are completed alongside Germains’ commercial trials, which are small plot trials run independently by Armstrong Fisher and the British Beet Research Organisation (BBRO). Look out for this year’s commercial yield trial results that will be published on our news page in early 2018.
Source: Germains
