About SAATEN-UNION UK: Breeding for the Future.
Who are we?
SAATEN-UNION GmbH was founded in 1965 and is an association of seven medium-sized German plant-breeding enterprises with more than 100 years of breeding experience behind them.
SAATEN-UNION UK represent these breeders, initially by screening and testing varieties under UK conditions. Promising lines are then developed and studied so further information can be collected to be used by farmers and agronomists.
“Züchtung ist Zukunft” (Breeding for the future) explains our strategy because seeds are the most basic elements for supplying people with a healthy variety of food and renewable resources.
Our primary trials site in Suffolk is where we evaluate new varieties from our German breeders and conduct official trials for BSPB (British Society of Plant Breeders) and AHDB (Agricultural and Horticultural Development Board). Additionally, we maintain satellite trials sites across the country, with our primary location situated in North Lincolnshire. Recently, we’ve broadened our agronomy efforts in winter wheat, hybrid rye, and spring oats at our Cowlinge site.
We currently complete 3rd party trialling programmes for other breeders at all our sites in the UK.
Elsoms: Our sales and marketing partner
Since 2013, Saaten Union UK have been working in partnership with Elsoms Seeds. Elsoms Seeds are a family owned independent plant breeding and seed technology company whose ethos very much matches our own.
Saaten Union UK and Elsoms Seeds work as a team delivering trials data, product management, sales and marketing to our customers in the UK.
Elsoms Seeds is based in Spalding in Lincolnshire and has a long history of business in the horticultural and agricultural sectors going back 180 years.
The partnership with Elsoms also includes successful breeding alliances such as Elsoms Wheat Ltd. This partnership was set up in 2013 and has produced successful varieties both in the UK and Europe. Also in the barley crop we have collaborations between Elsoms Seeds and another German breeder to form Elsoms Ackermann Barley, which have also had success in the UK with varieties like Bolton winter barley.
Rosalie Field Station
Our Field Station is based at Cowlinge just south of Newmarket on heavy clay loam soils. This site is perfect for cereal trialing. We use about 60ha a year rotating around the farm of 350ha. We normally have about 30-35ha in the first cereal position and 20-25ha in a second cereal situation.
This enables us to do trials in both regimes depending on the requirements of the project/breeder. We use a plough / press system for the trials but the rest of the farm uses minimum tillage operations.
At Rosalie we have official trials (AHDB, BSPB), private/breeder trials, technical marketing trials in conjunction with our partner Elsoms Seeds and also 3rd party trials for other breeders/agronomy companies. We have a full fleet of small standard farming equipment as well as more plot specific machinery.
We also run a winter wheat site in north Lincolnshire at Wold Newton with the help of the host farmer at this site. We have in the region of 5-6ha of plots equating to approx.2750 winter wheat yield plots. There is a mixture of trials at this site including untreated plots for BSPB.
Did you know we work with the main UK Cereal Crops?
