Plant Breeding

Why Thriplow?

KWS UK employs a highly skilled group of professionals based in the arable heartlands of East Anglia since the 1980’s.

This team breeds, selects, and markets varieties that suit a wide range of conditions and which are increasingly sought after in other European countries.

Thriplow was chosen because it has a relatively continental climate with cold winters and warm summers. Average rainfall is around 20 inches but occasionally much less representing a relatively water stressed environment.

Soils are variable including chalks, clays and gravels giving the opportunity for testing our wide range of crops across conditions commonly found in the UK arable heartlands.

Here, alongside field facilities, we have a number of controlled environment glasshouses for year round cropping, and purpose-built laboratories that fully evaluate the potential of all selected lines.

However, KWS UK also has commercial and breeding trials across the UK from Cornwall to Scotland and all major arable areas in between. In addition to our UK facilities, we have extensive testing facilities across Europe.

Leading varieties

Our first variety to achieve recognition in the national testing system was a winter oilseed rape, Apache, in 1991.

From that beginning we have gone on to achieve strong national and international recognition as a result of a continuous flow of market leading varieties in all sectors.

You will be familiar with oilseed varieties such as Komando and Pronto alongside leading wheats Oakley and Robigus, as examples of the innovative varieties we have introduced.

As our portfolio moves forward, look out for Viscount – a new Group 3 wheat, Wintmalt our first malting potential winter barley and Epure a high yielding conventional oilseed rape.

Increasing cereal yields

Our breeders specialise in the rapid creation and evaluation of new cereal lines. Using advanced breeding technologies we can bring varieties to the market in less than five years.

We use traditional pedigree breeding methods supplemented by single seed descent, double haploids, molecular markers and supporting analytical technology.

Our winter wheat breeding programme starts with over 1200 crosses every year. These are whittled down to around 700 advanced and heavily selected lines by the F6 generation.

These then go forward and are tested in the field prior to selection of around 70 pre-National List candidates where agronomy, end-quality and yield are more fully assessed.

Successes have been notable with varieties offering increased yield, quality, better disease and pest resistance and an ability to cope under a wide range of conditions and regions.