A TEAM of students from Aberystwyth University’s Institute of Biological, Environmental and Rural Sciences (IBERS) has defeated 13 other university and college teams to lift the 2017 NIAB Agronomy Cup.

The competition, which has been running since 2012, is open to agriculture and crop science students from universities and colleges from across the UK.

This is the first time the cup has been won by a team from outside of England.

The winning team of agriculture degree students are James Bradley, David Casebow, Anna Crockford, Rosie Francis and Hannah Hinchliffe.

Prof Mike Gooding, director of IBERS, said: “I am delighted that the IBERS team has won this prestigious cup, highlighting the cereal growing expertise they are developing as part of the agricultural courses here at Aberystwyth.”

Cambridge-based NIAB runs the NIAB Agronomy Cup competition to challenge a team’s agronomy, farm management and agricultural decision-making skills.

Dr Irene Griffiths from IBERS said: “The teams were briefed to make input decisions for effective and productive growing of the winter wheat variety KWS Siskin.

“The students grow wheat and barley trial plots at IBERS’ Gogerddan campus just outside Aberystwyth as part of their degree course, but for the IBERS team the competition meant a 170-mile round trip to field walk competition plots on a NIAB field trials site at Callow trials centre, near Hereford.

“This emphasised the importance of basing recommendations on field observations and local conditions.”

The IBERS team achieved the highest gross margin of £1,402.55/ha in the 2017 competition, based on a yield of 11.15 t/ha and an input cost of £80.40/ha.

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