SITE DESCRIPTION

Kirkton has a short growing season, around 260 days and is the most exposed of our three UK trials sites. Winter kill and snow mould damage can be significant problems in this location.

KEY AIMS

This site is used to develop varieties and grass seed mixtures, primarily for northern Britain. To perform well on this site, a variety must have excellent spring growth, as the first cut can be responsible for more than 50 percent of the total annual production.

This requirement for excellent spring growth is carried into the mixture trials. All Scottish BAR Forage mixtures, both current and potential future formulations are trialled to ensure maximum production in a relatively short growing season.

The focus on early season growth and winter hardiness ensures both varieties and mixtures from this trials programme will give the end user the maximum performance in more extreme conditions.

The Kirkton site is run by the Scottish Agricultural Colleges (SAC) and is adjacent to the UK National List trials, which are used to provide data for first entry to the Recommended List, so these trials provide a very good guide to a variety’s potential for the SAC Recommended List.

This site is also used to supply data for potential entry into Scandinavian trials.

SCOPE

The SAC National and Recommended List trials, at Kirkton, test every variety of perennial ryegrass, hybrid and Italian ryegrasses, Timothy and white clover currently in the National List system plus re-tests for the SAC Recommended List. In addition there is a separate red clover trial, which is comparing current varieties to produce a new SAC list.

TESTING

Barenbrug trials, at Kirkton, are sown in mid-summer, allowed to establish well, before being cut four times per year over the following two years to give a total grass yield. The cutting times are aimed to simulate local farm practice of two silage cuts followed by late summer and autumn grazing. All the plots are assessed for yield, sward density, disease resistance and resistance to winter damage.

All the trials have high levels of fertiliser applied, the equivalent of 340kg per hectare of Nitrogen with matching Phosphate and Potash. This is to push the varieties to their ultimate performance and to bring out any small differences in yield or weaknesses to disease or cold damage. This regime ensures that the varieties and mixtures that succeed in this system will have been proved in far more extreme conditions than normal farming practice.

CONTENT OF TRIALS

Barenbrug has over 500 individual plots sown at Kirkton, testing potential early, intermediate and late heading perennial ryegrasses and Timothy, as well as mixture trials.

In addition there are Barenbrug varieties of perennial ryegrass, hybrid and Italian ryegrasses, Timothy, red and white clovers in the adjacent National List trials.

The varieties are sourced from Barenbrug breeding programmes in Holland, France and New Zealand and from our commercial partners, AFBI from Northern Ireland, Boreal from Finland AgResearch from New Zealand and ILVO in Belgium.

All the trials compare the potential new varieties against a basket of the best available current varieties, to ensure continuous improvement.

Barenbrug has two further UK trials sites located at Cropvale and Loughgall. This multi-site trialling in three very different geographic locations means that testing of new potential varieties is being conducted in locations representative of the main UK grass usage areas. The same seed stock is sown at each site and although it is not possible to undertake a direct comparison between the yields on the different sites, it is possible to compare performances by looking at the highest yielding varieties within each trial.

Varieties that consistently produce yields of 100 percent or greater within a trial have the potential to perform well in all farming conditions.

A comparison of the trials of 39 different varieties sown on the three sites in 2007 shows only 17 gave a yield consistently better than the mean (100%) in each trial and of these only one was a recommended variety - Dunluce - out of the nine used as controls.

RESULTS

The initial results from Kirkton (after two years of testing) show that 20 percent of the potential varieties give a significant improvement over the best performing current variety, with the best improvement being a 10 percent higher yield. This should be compared to the 20-year average of yield increases, which works out at less than 0.5 percent per year.

The potential high yielding varieties come from a wide genetic background, and include varieties from Holland, Belgium and France as well as a strong showing from AFBI.

Of particular interest are the Timothy varieties from Boreal, because these varieties have been selected for a short Scandinavian summer. They have a completely different growth habit from the Dutch and Belgian varieties that are used in the UK.

They start spring growth later than UK varieties, but put on massive production in early and mid summer, before going dormant relatively early in the autumn, as their way of surviving the Scandinavian winter, But in their short, sharp growth, they will produce as much forage as UK varieties achieve in their longer growing season.