SPECIAL REPORT
RYEGRASS
Trevor Ellett: A ryegrass pioneer Words by: Anne Lee
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Accuracy. No Less.
sers of modern varieties of ryegrass descended from Grasslands Nui and Ellet ryegrass can thank Trevor Ellett’s tenacity and passion for improving pasture. His work also, somewhat unwittingly, led to the understanding that endophytes play a huge role in ryegrass persistence. The Mangere farmer and former Massey College graduate and lecturer was a pioneer in ryegrass development doggedly seeking persistence he saw as lacking in the grasses coming out of the government-sponsored breeding programmes of the day.
Trevor died in 2006 at the age of 95 and was a recipient of the coveted NZ Grassland Trust Ray Brougham Trophy for his contribution to dairying and for his development of Mangere ryegrass which was first commercialised as Ellett and Grassland Nui ryegrasses. The farm at Mangere was one of two owned by Trevor and it was when he returned to the farm after the Second World War and lecturing at the then Massey College that he was dismayed to find the latest government-bred, certified ryegrasses did not survive past one season once sown in his paddocks. Like many farmers of the day, he had strong ryegrass pastures of local “ecotypes”
and he collected the seed from his bestperforming paddock, sowing that instead. Through his connections with DSIR Grasslands director Lionel Corkill, a nursery of the latest and best Trevor Ellett. ryegrass breeding lines was sown on Trevor’s farm. On the same day, and unbeknown to the scientists, Trevor also sowed his own ecotype, which he named Mangere ryegrass, in an area beside the nursery. His grass survived the summer but the
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| www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | November 2021
