Variety Finder Online

AGES has recently begun offering an interactive variety finder to facilitate rapid, property-based, comparative variety selection, based on regional yield data.
This makes the Austrian Federal Office for Food Safety – in cooperation with AGES – the first European licensing institution to provide such an instrument for winter wheat, winter barley, grain maize, potatoes, sugar beet and winter rape seed in the agricultural sector. Only CETIOM – the French research and development institution for the promotion of oilseed crop production – provides a similar product named myVar® to local farmers for winter rape seed, sunflowers, soya beans and hemp.

This is how the variety finder works

The AGES Variety Finder is a tool for farmers that helps them find a suitable variety in line with their individual requirements, based on personal selection and filter settings. The following filter criteria can be set:

1. Crop: e.g. winter wheat
2. Lists: which should be used (e.g. horticultural and qualitative properties)
3. Groups: e.g. quality and mixing wheat
4. Search filter: set maximum limits for properties such as storage ≤4, yellow rust ≤6, hectolitre weight ≤4, etc.
5. Compare varieties: further reduce the varieties already shown in the filter
6. Reduce properties: reduce number of properties to the properties desired 

The AGES Variety Finder limits the number of varieties suitable to a handful in most instances, depending on the number and selection of individual feature criteria and the weighting of features (weighting levels 1 to 9), based on regional disease pressure and intended production intensity at the relevant farm. Varieties can be sorted by clicking on a headline on the last page. Clicking on a grade will open a pop-up window explaining the appropriate feature.
At present, there are only horticultural and quality tables available for maize and potatoes. Yield tables will be added in April. For all other cultures, all tables from the Descriptive Variety List are available.