United Kingdom
September 5, 2025
For Rob Nickols, two years of growing LG Beowulf have confirmed its resilience and dependable performance — even in one of the toughest seasons on record.
Farming 540ha of rented and owned land on the Fens near Sleaford in Lincolnshire, Rob Nickols has grown LG Beowulf for the past two years and has been suitably impressed with the variety, despite the challenging season.
Growing mostly first wheats, winter and spring beans, sugar beet, millet and spring barley, Mr Nickols largely targets the feed market but has grown LG Beowulf for seed this season after it performed well last year.
“We planted 14ha of LG Beowulf for seed as well another 12ha separately, using a John Deere 750A in mid-October 2024. It was drilled into land which suffers with blackgrass, so it had both a pre-emergence and peri-emergence herbicide. It went into a stale seedbed in good conditions, with no significant issues,” explains Mr Nickols.
Throughout the season disease levels were low and although Mr Nickols is aware of changes to the variety’s resistance to yellow rust, he did not see a lot of disease. “The variety had a full fungicide programme but it was not overdone,” he notes. “At T0 we applied Sakura (bromuconazole + tebuconazole), which was followed by Ceratavo Plus (benzovindiflupyr) and Carcamo at T1 (prothioconazole + tebuconazole). At T2 it received Rylox (mefentrifluconazole + pyraclostrobin) and Imtex (fluxapyroxad) and at T3, Amistar (azoxystrobin).
He points out that septoria is the bigger yield robber, but if there was going to be a disease issue that has been challenging this season, it would be yellow rust. “All varieties seem to have lost some resistance to yellow rust this year but while we have tebuconazole we can tackle the disease.
“At the end of the day, applying a T0 is not expensive, totalling around £10/ha, so apart from the extra time involved in its application, it works out similar in cost to years where it has been too wet to apply one and we have subsequently had to increase our spend at T1.”
In terms of nutrition, LG Beowulf received an average of 210kgN/ha which was applied using Yara’s N-Sensor.
Like many others, Mr Nickols experienced drought on his farm this year, with only 240mm of rain falling since January. “Around 50mm of this fell in January.
“LG Beowulf has done really well in such extreme drought conditions which goes to show its resilience.
“Although it is probably a slightly taller variety than some, it has stood well without any challenge for the past two seasons, says Mr Nickols.
“LG Beowulf came off the cart at 11.4t/ha , which was neck and neck with another variety we had on similar land, but a nudge above other varieties we had on farm.
Based on the results we have had from the past two years of growing it, it has proven itself a good variety, so we will keep it on farm for as long as we can.”
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