Drilling a companion crop or seed mixture alongside oilseed rape could help control pests and add valuable nutrition to soils, new thinking is suggesting.

The tighter arable rotations used by growers in recent years, an increasing number of large mixed farming operations and greater use of brassica elements in cover crops is making Clubroot a growing threat to UK oilseed rape growers.

A range of high yielding oilseed rapes with added agronomic functionality will be showcased by seed breeders DSV UK at Cereals 2019.

One of the key features will be DSV’s new Turnip Yellow Virus (TuYV) resistant oilseed rape variety Temptation which has one of the strongest all-round production and agronomic packages in the new 2019/20 AHDB RL.

Turnip Yellows Virus (TuYV) – originally thought to be insignificant, this virus is now spreading at lightning speed across Europe’s oilseed rape fields, reports German plant breeding company Deutsche Saatveredelung AG (DSV). Transmitted by aphids, the virus causes damage to plants that is difficult to detect and results in yield losses of up to 30%.  The only effective measure is to grow resistant varieties of oilseed rape.

Rapeseed is the third mostly grown oilseed in the world, while today it is still a niche crop in South American countries and not known by many farmers. Nevertheless, oilseed rape fits perfectly to the conditions in most countries in the southern hemisphere and it offers a huge potential for farmers due to the high profits. It also helps to diversify the crop rotation and improves soil fertility.