Get early insight into crop variety performance with RL harvest results

Our annual harvest results service starts next month. Jason Pole explains how it delivers the latest data from the Recommended Lists for cereals and oilseeds (RL) trials and why it may not be wise to focus solely on results from your nearest site.

If you’d like to know when we add new RL trial data to our website, then sign up for the harvest results email service.

The harvest results web pages already feature information on the harvest 2026 trial sites (includes location, soil types and sowing dates) and sowing lists (cites all varieties in trial).

We will add the latest harvest data shortly after each major crop trial has been cut. This covers winter barley, spring barley, winter wheat, spring wheat, winter oats, spring oats and winter oilseed rape.

For the minor (described) crops, which cover spring oilseed rape, spring linseed, winter triticale and winter rye, we will release all data in one batch at the end of harvest (because of the relatively low number of trials).

For each crop during harvest, we update an Excel workbook with yield (fungicide-treated and untreated), quality, agronomic and disease data from all harvested and validated trials.

The RL team also issues regular commentary to put the results in context, including any emerging trends and usual results.

Just like commercial crops, we never know what each season will bring when the trials are drilled.

To illustrate this point, just look at the last few years.

We’ve seen flooding and waterlogging (2023/24), drought and a significant new strain of wheat yellow rust (2024/25), the warmest spring on record for England and Wales and an unsettled start to summer (2025/26).

Of course, variation (across seasons and trials) helps us pull apart differences between varieties.

However, the key data in the RL publications and tools is based on results from multiple trials and multiple years.

This process irons out variation and provides a robust indication of average variety performance under a wide range of conditions.

As a result, it is useful to look at trial-site data to get a better overall feel for how variety performance can vary at each location in a particular year.

Although results are based on conditions in that year, specific trial data can help you understand how a variety may perform in a wet or dry year, for example.

Additionally, consistent performance for a trait over several years may indicate a degree of stability.

However, there is no ‘representative’ trial and it isn’t wise to make variety choices on the results from one season from your nearest trial site.

In fact, your nearest trial may not be the one that most closely matches your conditions.

For instance, an analysis of wheat yields shows that varieties in trials in south-west England perform most like the trials in Northern Ireland.

When you review harvest results, consider data from other sites, especially in your RL region and other areas with similar conditions.

The three RL crop committees and RL board will consider all validated results from this year and recent years to decide which varieties get the coveted ‘new’ status in the next RL edition (and which varieties to remove).

RL 2027/28 is due out online on 30 November 2026.

We also publish regular updates on UK commercial harvest progress for key cereals (wheat, barley and oats) and winter oilseed rape, as well as estimates of yield and quality. The first report is usually published by the middle of July.