SITE DESCRIPTION

Cropvale has a long growing season, around 300 days and is a well sheltered site. Grass growth is limited by frost and cold weather in the winter and drought in the summer. Cropvale is a working farm, that until recently milked cows, it is now a mixed farm with beef, sheep and arable production. The field used for the trials was one of the main cow grazing fields.

AIM OF TRIALS SITE

Cropvale is used to develop new varieties and mixtures for central and southern Britain, areas where lack of summer rainfall and fungal diseases, particularly Crown Rust affect both the yield and quality of the grasses. The stresses the new varieties and mixtures are subjected to are different from the other sites at Aberdeen and Loughgall, disease and drought stress are key factors in their performance.

So to perform well on this site, varieties must have good overall disease resistance, have a long growing season and be tolerant of hot, dry conditions. Varieties from Barenbrug’s French and Dutch breeding programmes, as well as AFBI material work well here.

This focus on disease and drought ensures that mixtures developed at Cropvale have good overall disease resistance to give high quality, clean, palatable, production throughout the growing season.

SCOPE OF TRIALS SITE

Cropvale tests all the varieties and species from the Barenbrug and AFBI breeding programmes that are thought to be of benefit to UK agriculture. These include, early, intermediate and late heading varieties of perennial ryegrasses, hybrid and Italian ryegrasses, cocksfoot, Timothy, tall fescue, vetches and red and white clovers.

Trials are sown twice a year, with the main sowing in the autumn. Sowing is followed by two years of cutting to simulate normal farm use. The plots being cut for two silage crops, followed by a normal rotational grazing. Subject to climate, cutting dates will follow normal farm practice.

Spring sowings are mainly of species, like lucerne, that is slow to establish and is better to have a full summer, before entering the cutting regime.

Barenbrug has two further UK trials sites located at Loughgall and Aberdeen. 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.

CONTENT OF TRIALS

Over 800 plots have been sown at Cropvale, these include a complete screening trial for new prospective varieties. In addition there are demonstration plots that will replicate yield information about the performance of different species compared to known varieties like Tyrella and Dunluce

Also included in these trials are mixture trials that will give both total yield and seasonal growth information as well as sward densities and disease resistance figures for all the current and prospective BAR Forage leys.

Potential varieties sown at Cropvale include Italian, hybrid and perennial ryegrasses from Barenbrug’s breeding programmes in Nijmegen and Toulouse, Perennial ryegrasses from Reims, ILVO near Ghent, AgriSeed in New Zealand as well as AFBI in Northern Ireland. These new potential varieties are compared with a basket of the best NIAB Recommended varieties, to ensure that any new variety will offer a clear benefit over the best currently on the market.

INITIAL RESULTS

Initial results from the 2005 and 2006 sowings has produced Dutch bred Italian ryegrass varieties that are showing a yield increase of 15 percent over current Recommended varieties, and these have been entered into the UK National List Trial system to see if this improvement can be replicated on a much wider scale.

Of particular interest are new, late heading, Perennial ryegrass varieties, both diploid and tetraploid, from Barenbrug’s French breeding programme. Having been bred in relatively dry, disease prone conditions in Northern France they are performing exceptionally well giving yields that are 8 percent above the best of the current varieties while having exceptional resistance to Crown Rust.

These trials are also used to confirm the performance of current varieties. Two new perennial type hybrids will not be going any further after they failed to show any significant improvement over the currently recommended variety Foyle.