Data sharing initiative wins national award for saving farmers time
The work Fonterra has done with Ballance Agri-Nutrients Ltd, LIC and Ravensdown to save farmers time through better data connections has been recognised with a national award.
Choosing the correct perennial ryegrass can be daunting when all sales reps are saying they have the best.
They tend to avoid the important matter of which is the best for you, so here are some options to look at when choosing a perennial ryegrass.
Consider these four main points:
1. Endophyte strain (relative to insect pressure)
2. Flowering/heading date
3. Ploidy (tetraploid or diploid)
4. Lineage/breeding
Endophyte strains
Insect pressure is a key reason perennial ryegrasses don’t persist. The further north you are in New Zealand, the more protection against insects your ryegrass will need.
Black beetle, porina, Argentine stem weevil, grass grub and field crickets all have a huge effect, stripping valuable dry matter and even killing ryegrass pastures.
Choosing and understanding the correct endophyte strain is very important for the longevity of your pastures. AR1, AR37 and NEA2 are all novel endophytes, developed by plant breeders to help protect grasses from insect attack.
Getting the timing right
A heading date is when 50% of the plants have emerged seed-heads. This is key because seed-head development reduces feed quality in late spring and the heading date determines when this occurs. Heading dates are defined relative to the cultivar Nui (about 22 October) heading at day 0.
Heading/flowering time is important here as it controls the extent of early spring production and late spring quality The standard heading/flowering ryegrasses are good for late August-early spring growth as this is when the quality is best, and will carry the farm through the typical spring feed pinch.
By mid-spring (October), growth rates are often high and the feed supply often changes to a surplus; here pasture quality may deteriorate if grazing management is not precise. At this point, late flowering ryegrasses such as Ultra and Matrix (+20- +23 days after Nui) come into their own as the earlier flowering ryegrasses lose their quality.
Ploidy
Ploidy is a term referring to the number of chromosomes per cell. The two main ploidies are tetraploid and diploid.
• Diploids are the most common, normally found on sheep and beef farms, due to ease of management, and have two sets of chromosomes per cell.
• Tetraploids have four sets of chromosomes per cell, which are larger, and generally grow bigger darker leaves, with larger but fewer tillers. They have a higher ratio of water soluble carbohydrate (cell contents) to fibre (cell wall) e.g. higher ME and are preferred by livestock.
However, tetraploids take greater management as they are easily over-grazed, so persistence can be an issue. Lineage/breeding
As for top quality breeding stock, it is important to understand the bloodlines or parentage of your grasses.
It’s pointless trying to grow a plant that doesn’t belong in your environment.
Most of the breeding lines of grasses in NZ come from northwest Spain where the conditions closely resemble NZ’s. The difference is that the germ plasm is millions of years old so the perennial ryegrass has evolved over centuries to be able to survive those conditions.
• Jeremy Klingender is Ravensdown seed product manager.
Managing director of Woolover Ltd, David Brown, has put a lot of effort into verifying what seems intuitive, that keeping newborn stock's core temperature stable pays dividends by helping them realise their full genetic potential.
Within the next 10 years, New Zealand agriculture will need to manage its largest-ever intergenerational transfer of wealth, conservatively valued at $150 billion in farming assets.
Boutique Waikato cheese producer Meyer Cheese is investing in a new $3.5 million facility, designed to boost capacity and enhance the company's sustainability credentials.
OPINION: The Government's decision to rule out changes to Fringe Benefit Tax (FBT) that would cost every farmer thousands of dollars annually, is sensible.
Compensation assistance for farmers impacted by Mycoplama bovis is being wound up.
Selecting the reverse gear quicker than a lovestruck boyfriend who has met the in-laws for the first time, the Coalition Government has confirmed that the proposal to amend Fringe Benefit Tax (FBT) charged against farm utes has been canned.
OPINION: Years of floods and low food prices have driven a dairy farm in England's northeast to stop milking its…
OPINION: An animal activist organisation is calling for an investigation into the use of dairy cows in sexuallly explicit content…