Help us improve Recommended Lists (RL) services

Paul Gosling, who leads the Recommended Lists (RL) at AHDB, explains how responses to a short questionnaire will help direct the development of variety selection tools.

The current RL strategy (2022–27) includes a commitment to gather views and opinions on the way the RL works and how it could work better for levy payers.

We take pride in the fact that the RL is available in easy-to-use, freely available formats.

Digital developments have expanded the opportunity to add value to RL data and it is important that we exploit options carefully to deliver the best value to your businesses. This aspect is a focus of the latest RL questionnaire.

A recent digital development includes the AHDB variety selection tools. Covering winter wheat, spring barley, winter barley, spring oats, winter oats and winter oilseed rape, these online tools allow users to manipulate RL data to suit their unique variety selection requirements. For example, it is possible to select specific end-use groups and place more emphasis on certain agronomic traits – such as a disease that is particularly challenging to control.

First introduced three years ago, these tools have been well received but many people do not use them. It is important that we understand why that is, so we can make them more useful to a wider range of levy payers.

This questionnaire will help us take stock of the expanding ways people consume RL data – including if, when and how they use the variety selection tools.

The responses will also give us a deeper understanding about when people make variety choices – which will help us better align the release of RL data throughout the year.

Critically, people can provide their views on the RL, including how we could potentially better meet the needs of its varied users.

The RL cannot answer all the questions that levy payers have. However, responding to this questionnaire will help the project evolve, and ensure its core values of robust and independent information, coupled with relevance, are maintained.

The questionnaire, which should take no longer than 10 minutes to complete, is open until 9 September 2022 (5pm).

The provision of RL information for the cereals and oilseeds sector was strongly supported by most levy payers in the recent Shape the Future process. When asked to rate the importance of the RL as an area of work, levy payers scored the RL as 4.2 out of 5 (where 1 and 5 equals low and high importance, respectively).