Alchemy has a very high yield potential, both fungicide treated and untreated, and has all of the attributes to help farmers meet the very significant challenges facing them in the coming years.

Although very high yield will continue to be the key driver in the decision making process, for most growers other factors have an increasing importance. With the development of strobilurin resistant strains of Septoria, increased emphasis must be placed on highly disease resistant varieties like Alchemy. Alchemy has the best all-round disease resistance of any variety ever produced from the Nickerson wheat breeding programme which already has an outstanding reputation for producing varieties with durable genetic resistance.

It is also highly desirable to have stiff straw to maximise yield potential. When treated with pgrs, Alchemy is rated the maximum of 9 for resistance to lodging, a very important characteristic.

Although Alchemy is a nabim Group 4 variety, it is a soft endosperm type with the potential to meet the requirements of the UKS export category. In addition distilling data has shown the variety to have very high spirit yields. The physical grain characteristics of high Hagberg Falling Number and a good specific weight offer growers very high levels of security in meeting the specifications of each of its target markets.

All information is a partial extraction from the HGCA Recommended List 2007/8.  See www.hgca.com for the full dataset