Collaborating on forages

SPECIAL REPORT RYEGRASS

Acollaboration between a Canterbury seed company and a local farmer is paying dividends for both.

Cropmark Seeds, a Canterbury-based seed breeding company is working closely with Burnham-based dairy farmers Tony and Sue Reynolds to evaluate lines of forage grasses it has developed within its plant breeding programme.

Cropmark breed and supply a full portfolio of forage grasses, clovers, herbs, brassicas and novel endophytes for dairy farming systems from their base in Selwyn.

The company is the country’s only fully NZ-owned forage grass and crop seed company - all its competitors are overseasowned.

As part of its R&D programme, it runs a network of large-scale onfarm cultivar evaluation trials across multiple dairy farms in Canterbury, the Waikato and Victoria, Australia each overseen by a regional trials agronomist. In these trials, cultivars are evaluated under both simulated grazing (cut) and herd grazing in irrigated and rainfed environments.

Cropmark’s technical manager Dr Matt Deighton oversees all trialing activities conducted by the company.

“Factors such as seasonal drymatter yield, metabolisable energy, digestibility, grazing preference, disease and insect pest tolerance, animal safety and persistence are all measured,” Matt says.

“We want to ensure that our forages perform consistently across the country. To begin with, new cultivars must excel within managed trials, but it’s equally important that they demonstrate robust performance under commercial conditions, and that’s where our relationships with our host farmers comes to the fore.”

“The Cropmark breeding programme produces hundreds of nucleus seed lines each year, all of which enter first-stage productivity trials within replicated ‘mini swards’. To increase trial throughput, Cropmark have recently imported a Gianni Ferrari forage harvester from Italy, enabling a single operator to maintain the yield measurement rotation - speed is key with over 1500 ‘mini swards’ to maintain.”

Being able to work onfarm with cooperative farmers is essential for the company, and that is where Tony and Sue Reynolds come in. The company runs a series of trials each year on their property, and this enables screening of varieties based on their onfarm performance.

Tony and Sue milk a crossbred herd of 380 cows under irrigation on the outskirts of Burnham. After many years of farm management, they decided to develop their own farm and in 2018 converted their dry-stock property.

Hosting Cropmark’s onfarm trials enables them to keep up with the latest in forage development and they value being able to view the performance of a range of varieties under their environment and management practices.

“With a stocking rate of 4.75 cows/ha we have a real focus on maintaining high quality pastures and our home-grown feed supply,” Tony says.

“This season we’re on track to produce 2500kg milksolids (MS)/ha, so supporting Cropmark to develop new highperformance forages and getting them into our system quickly is a win-win for us.”

Left: Matt Deighton with agronomist Richard Moate (L) at Cropmark Seeds cultivar evaluation site hosted by Fonterra suppliers Tony & Sue Reynolds near Burnham.

Avatar NEA

One perennial ryegrass cultivar that has consistently excelled within Cropmark’s trials is Avatar NEA, a new high performing tetraploid containing the NEA endophyte.

Matt describes Avatar as a very late heading and persistent tetraploid ryegrass producing high metabolizable energy (ME) yields per hectare, a winning combination for milk producers and key selection criterion for Cropmark.

Avatar NEA combines three high value traits that drive its overall performance and value: 1.Plant persistence by withstanding increasing environmental pressures to maintain high plant populations within grazed swards;

2.Improved Nutritive Value and

palatability to promote higher consumption per cow, increase daily energy intake, improve sward utilization and assist maintaining residuals, and 3. Seasonally weighted ME yield with an emphasis on increased yield during winter, summer and autumn when feed is needed most, whilst maintaining spring pasture quality.

Matt says Avatar NEA excels across all three of these traits and is highly ranked in the NZPBRA National Forage Variety Trials (NFVT) for its drymatter yield alone. In fact, Avatar NEA has earned the highest NFVT rank of all perennial ryegrasses, of any ploidy, for high value winter yield for all NZ. Avatar NEA has repeated its competitive dry matter yield in the most recent Upper South Island NFVT trial completed this year. (Table 1).

Tony and Sue were among the first in the country to sow Avatar NEA as it became commercially available. Their first paddock was an under-sown year-old chicory crop, Avatar was a vigorous establisher so was chosen again to renew their older diploid pastures.

Tony, who sees value in multi-species pastures on his Burnham soils, says he’s TABLE 1. TETRAPLOID CULTIVARS HIGHLIGHTED WITHIN THE 2018-2021 UPPER SOUTH ISLAND NFVT TRIAL P218BUR

PERENNIAL RYEGRASS SEASONAL AND TOTAL YIELD (KGDM/HA), MEAN OF 3 YEARS

Entry Winter Early Spring Late Spring Summer Autumn Mean Year

Reason AR37 985 b 2587 a 4229 bd 4078 a 2949 a 14622 a

Avatar NEA 1092 a 2405 bc 4211 be 4049 a 2769 ac 14472 ab

SF Hustle AR1 962 bc 2609 a 4252 bc 3829 ac 2597 bf 14098 ac

Legion AR37 858 dg 2360 bd 3956 ef 3961 ab 2972 a 13965 ad Platform AR37 849 dg 2348 bd 4170 be 3799 ac 2796 ab 13790 ae Bronsyn SE 870 cg 2572 a 4207 be 3703 ac 2717 ae 13763 ae Sequel SE 882 bf 2285 cd 4181 be 3740 ac 2631 be 13725 ae One50 AR1 939 bd 2334 bd 4090 ce 3712 ac 2741 ac 13709 ae

AberMagic AR1 826 eg 2394 bc 4408 ab 3626 bd 2760 ac 13675 be Evans Edge 863 cg 2355 bd 4447 ab 3782 ac 2481 cf 13652 be Raider NEA2 924 be 2348 bd 3973 de 3800 ac 2730 ad 13582 be

Base AR37 977 b 2363 bd 4064 ce 3790 ac 2621 be 13549 be

One50 AR37 847 dg 2201 d 4120 ce 3957 ab 2619 be 13425 cf Evans Happe 809 fg 2327 cd 4578 a 3632 bd 2434 ef 13380 cf SF Moxie AR1 846 dg 2497 ab 4041 ce 3474 cd 2702 ae 13220 cf AberGain AR1 766 g 2209 d 4440 ab 3679 ad 2494 cf 13131 df Tyson NEA4 866 cg 2647 a 4057 ce 3441 cd 2326 f 12978 ef One50 WE 938 bd 2317 cd 3680 f 3283 d 2468 df 12499 f

Trial Mean 909 2396 4103 3762 2680 13587

Significance *** *** *** *** *** *** LSD (5%) 103 169 276 410 282 932 CV (%) 8.0 5.0 4.8 7.7 7.4 4.9

Means that differ by more than the Least Significant Difference (LSD, 5%) differ significantly (P < 0.05) as denoted by differing letters. CV = coefficient of variation. Note: this trial included a total of 31 varieties, on which the statistical analysis was conducted; however, 13 non-commercial lines have been removed from this presentation as requested by the NZPBRA.

also impressed with a multi-species dairy mix of Avatar NEA, Reaper red clover, Mantra white clover, Chico chicory and Oracle plantain. He’s been particularly pleased with the winter feed accumulation of Avatar in his rye-clover paddocks too. “That’s helped us carry higher covers through spring until day.

“The strong winter activity and palatability of Avatar has been obvious in our system, even as covers get away in spring, being a very late heading tetraploid, the cows achieve residuals and keep the quality up without topping.”