Bar Tech

Since the autumn of 2017, the Barenbrug Group has been running an agriculture trial site in Co Cork in Ireland, just north of the beautiful town of Clonakilty. This site is used for testing new agriculture grass and other species varieties, it is an important trial site addition to the AFBI site in Northern Ireland and the Barenbrug Cropvale site in Worcestershire.

With the mild climate of Southern Ireland, the trials are giving extra information about the behavior of new experimental grass varieties, for both the Irish and the UK market. With the information from three combined sites, we can make the best choices in our available genetics for the UK grassland farmer.

Each year, in early spring, I visit the farmer Alan Quin, who is managing the Barenbrug site in Clonakilty. It is always an adventure to get to the farm. For someone from the continent, it is a bit challenging to drive on the left side of the road, but the last mile to the farm is easy because there is no left or right side of the road. 

On my most recent visit this year in February, I was anxious to see the trials since Alan had his cows grazing the pastures already on January 15^th , which was  the earliest ever. The winter had been relatively dry with good growth, allowing the cows to go out earlier. 

The visit was planned for 8^{th -} 9^th February, and in southern Ireland you have to be a bit lucky with the weather. Unfortunately, I was not lucky and it rained when I arrived at Cork airport. This makes taking notes of plots a bit more complicated but the next morning it was dry and sunny, which gave a good opportunity to take a look at the research plots before they were cut and weighed. 

At the Clonakilty grass trial site we are comparing new experimental grass varieties with our current Barenbrug grass variety portfolio and also with the best grass varieties of our competitors. The origin of the newest material is very diverse as we test new grass varieties bred at AFBI in Northern Ireland  and Barenbrug grass varieties bred in the Netherlands and also New Zealand.

The majority of the Barenbrug portfolio exists of AFBI bred material and there are some exiting new varieties in the pipeline that have shown good results across the trials sites, Loughgall, Cropvale and Clonakilty. Only those grass varieties that perform on all sites are entered into official trials. 

New grass varieties from Barenbrug

The grass varieties bred by Barenbrug in New Zealand are of particular interest because they are able to produce impressive amounts of early spring biomass. Unlike the grass varieties bred in Europe, they hardly have any urge to go dormant in our winters, so they keep growing. Of course, this can be quite risky on the continent as they lack winterhardiness. But at the same time not all material from New Zealand is suitable for Ireland and the UK. Very often we see that some of these grass varieties are excellent in the first year of production, but they will drop in performance after the first winter. That is why not only having multiple trial sites is so important for testing, but also multiyear trials.

The trial plots remain in the field for at least two winters so we can select those grass varieties suitable for Ireland and the UK. The first Barenbrug grass variety bred in New Zealand to be recommended in both PPI Ireland, RGCL England and Wales will be Barwave, showing the top performing spring growth, very early in the year, giving farmers the opportunity to extend the growing season. The Teagasc and the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) 2022 PPI list, out now, ranks NEW Barwave second on the PPI list. Gracehill is in 4th position with a PPI score of €241, while Ballyvoy is in third position, increasing its total PPI to €186 this year and continuing to offer good spring growth - reinforcing Barenbrug's commitment to breeding and producing grasses for agriculture.