Cereal forage breeding for New Zealand agriculture

Abstract

Cereal forages provide both arable and livestock farmers with high yields of high quality dry matter to use as either standing or conserved strategic forage supplements where deficits occur when animal feed requirements exceed pasture growth. Crop & Food Research has breeding programmes for both single and multigrazing forage oats and triticales, and both green-chop and whole-crop silage forage oats, triticales and barleys. It also has an associated cereal forage management research and tech-transfer programme to ensure cereal forages achieve their potential under New Zealand's variable soil and climatic conditions. This has led to the development of new cereal forage cultivars, an increased understanding of their dry matter and quality development, and management support packages including a cereal silage booklet and maturity predictor for whole-crop cereal silage

Production of Biomass Crops Using Biowastes on Low‐Fertility Soil: 2. Effect of Biowastes on Nitrogen Transformation Processes

“…Biosolids as well as urea application resulted in a total biomass production of ryegrass similar to the reported average for a Feast II Italian ryegrass cultivar (Hanson et al, 2006), as discussed in detail by Esperschütz et al (2016b). Biosolids-sawdust application in combination with ryegrass caused a decrease in plant growth and reduced N accumulation into plants.…”