United Kingdom
February 27, 2026
The market for yellow peas has historically been for animal feed and this remains important. The demand is now increasing, driven by the use of yellow peas for human consumption – in products such as soups, stews and casseroles – as well as in ethnic food.
To give pulse growers the best varieties to meet this increased demand, breeders have introduced varieties with improved yields and agronomics.
Concerto and Orchestra from NPZ UK are two high yielding yellow pea varieties on the PGRO Descriptive List (DL) that meet both market and grower needs.
Edina Kare, NPZ UK’s Pulse Breeder, comments that “Concerto has good standing ability, early flowering time, early maturity and medium to tall plants. It also has good resistance to Downy mildew and is resistant to Pea wilt.
“Our breeding work is on track to bring further improvements to yellow pea varieties to do our part in developing the yellow pea crop UK in the future.”
For example, viruses that are seed-borne or transmitted through pea aphid can cause yield losses of up to 25%. Visible symptoms are stunting, shortening, downward rolling of leaflets, vein clearing and apical malformation, and ‘tennis-ball’ marking.
Breeding work on varietal resistance to viruses using markers and phenotyping is showing results with NPZ UK’s yellow pea variety Iconic, currently in Descriptive List trials, and having resistance to Bean yellow mosaic virus (BYMV).
Also, in the NPZ UK pipeline is a green pea variety in the second year of official trials testing (VL2) which has Pea seed-borne mosaic virus (PSbMV) resistance.
“Concerto is a good example of how our continuing breeding work gives growers the means to meet their yield and agronomic needs as well as fulfilling end user requirements,” adds Edina Kare.
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