SITE DESCRIPTION

Loughgall has a very long growing season, around 340 days and is a well sheltered site where there are no limits, either moisture or temperature, allowing a grass to express its full potential.

This site is the main plant breeding site of the Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute (AFBI). Breeding started in the 1950s and means that Loughgall is home to internationally know varieties like Tyrone, Portstewart and Gilford. It is now the largest breeding and trial site in the British Isles and continues to produce top performing varieties like Tyrella, Dunluce and Drumbo, a new late heading diploid perennial ryegrass.

Since the early 1990s, Barenbrug has been the commercial partner of AFBI and all AFBI bred varieties have been marketed through Barenbrug. The AFBI breeding programme is integrated with Barenbrug’s, giving Barenbrug access to the best UK-bred varieties and AFBI access to breeding material from around the world and worldwide marketing.

KEY AIMS

New varieties of early, intermediate and late heading perennial ryegrasses together with hybrid ryegrass and Timothy are bred and tested here, in addition new varieties of red and white clovers, cocksfoot, tall and meadow fescues from the Barenbrug breeding programmes are tested, both as straight grasses and innovative mixtures.

The site is also used to develop varieties and grass seed mixtures, primarily for the wetter areas of western Britain. To perform well on this site, a variety must have outstanding total growth, as the very long growing season makes it one of the highest yielding trial sites in Europe.

This requirement for maximum total yield is carried into the mixture trials, all Northern Irish Barenbrug Forage mixtures, both current and potential future formulations are trialled to ensure maximum production in a long growing season.

The focus on maximum production ensures both varieties and mixtures from this trials programme will give the end user the maximum performance in favourable conditions.

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

SCOPE

Loughgall is a fully-integrated plant breeding station, doing everything from the initial cross, through selection and testing until there is a variety that is ready to enter the market, a process that takes 16 years.

In year seven of this process the new potential variety will enter pre National List screening and will be sown together with new material from other Barenbrug breeders. TESTING

Over the following three years, all the new material will be cut on a simulated grazing system, one cut every three weeks for the first half of the growing year then one cut every four weeks, totalling nine cuts or a simulated conservation system of five cuts. This regime gives a full picture of the varieties’ yield potential. Additional tests also check the digestibility, disease resistance and sward density of each variety.

Plots of new potential varieties are also sown on a local dairy farm, where they are grazed, foraged and slurried as part of the normal farming activity. This provides an excellent view of the palatability of the variety and how persistent it will be under normal farming conditions

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

Loughgall trials include 19,000 individual space plants and over 3,200 grass plots.

The space plants are part of the selection process for new varieties, they are grown from the seed that is the result of crossing two parent lines, and each plant is measured and assessed over two years to see if it is suitable to be part of a new variety.

The plots are used for testing yield performance, disease and persistence. In addition to grass screening plots there are a significant number of white clover plots, testing material for the New Zealand breeder, AgResearch. From these tests came the top performing varieties Barblanca and Crusader, and the new small leaf variety Avalon, which is currently in Recommended List trials.

Innovative mixtures are also trialled and one example - Barmix, was developed here. Barmix includes tall fescue and cocksfoot, and out yielded a ryegrass ley by up to 19 percent.

New material currently on trial includes red clover varieties including, prostrate, grazing types and chicory.

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 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.

RESULTS

Varieties from Loughgall have played a significant part in improving the performance of animals from grassland in the British Isles.

Varieties like Gilford and Navan set new standards of yield and persistence and the current crop of varieties include Dunluce, the top yielding variety in the British Isles, Foyle, the first truly persistent hybrid and Drumbo, which looks to set new standards for yield and digestibility.

Crusader, the white clover variety, which was identified at Loughgall, went on to win the NIAB Cup for outstanding varieties, the first clover to do so. It is the highest yielding variety of its type, but the real improvement Crusader brought was a significant increase in the length of the growing season, Crusader will produce 45 percent more growth in the spring and autumn than comparison varieties.

A mixture of Commander chicory and Lemmon red clover is currently producing outstanding yields.