Higher sugar forage grasses in the pipeline

The best new generation of high sugar grasses could have water soluble carbohydrate contents almost 20% higher than the pioneering diploid perennial ryegrass variety AberDart - the first forage grass to win the prestigious NIAB Variety Cup for all round quality.

Speaking at meetings organised by Horizon Seeds (Cheltenham, 10th December) and Pontefract (11th December), grass breeder Dr Pete Wilkins from IGER outlined the progress the Institute is making in increasing both sugar and yield in forage ryegrasses.

"Depending on management regime, the new generation of Aber high sugar grasses (Aber HSG) are yielding at least an extra 40g/kg WSC in the latest trials. The results represent an annual improvement of 5g/kg - or 0.5 percentage points - over each of the past nine years of our Aber HSG breeding programme," he said.

"We are also widening the ratio between WSC and protein in the grass, which will allow the animal to utilise the protein more efficiently."

Dr Wilkins explained that grass with a high water soluble carbohydrate content provides extra, readily available energy for the rumen microbes. This results in the double benefit of allowing them to utilise more of the available protein from the forage for meat or milk production, while decreasing the amount of nitrogen lost in the urine.

"IGER animal scientists have recorded significant improvements in stock performance when grass varieties had water soluble carbohydrate contents at least four percentage points higher than 'control' varieties - so the improvements we are making should be very important to the on-farm performance of these new generation of Aber high sugar varieties," he stressed.

The first of the new generation of varieties, AberStar, will be available in autumn 2004.