Grass has the potential to produce up to 22 tonnes of dry matter per hectare on Northern Ireland farms, higher than most places in Europe, according to experts.

Members of Fermnagh Grassland Club heard the potential of grass varieties from David Johnston, grass breeder at AFBI Grass Breeding Station at Loughgall and Rien Louwes, Forage Product Manager with Barenbrug in the Netherlands, who provides technical support across Europe.

In a talk entitled, “Grass is king,” David outlined why grass is important to livestock farmers in Northern Ireland. Not everywhere in the British Isles enjoys the growth potential of grass as Northern Ireland.

David is incoming Chairman of the Ulster Grassland Society, and introducing his talk, reminded farmers that he last spoke to the Club 10 years ago.

Reviewing the 2014 growing season, he remarked, “There is no such thing as a normal grass year.” While grass growth throughout the year was great, there was disappointment at the quality of first cut silages.

David explained how they didn’t realise how good Northern Ireland growing conditions were by being able to produce 22 tonnes of dry matter but for the grass industry, there were always challenges.

He looked at new challenges for 2015. The aims of the AFBI grass breeding was to improve grass forage through yield, persistency, disease resistance and adaptability.

Conditions in Northern Ireland are different from other parts of Ireland, for example, there are 10 months of grazing in Cork and two months of winter.

The Loughgall Grass Breeding Station is jointly funded by AFBI and Barenbrug and they are the only UK breeding company with 4,000 plots and 25 acres of trials with sites in Aberdeen to test varieties in colder, winter conditions and Evesham in Worcestershire, where there are more severe winters and summer droughts.

He explained how there were different needs for grass varieties.

In Northern Ireland, farmers who had cattle housed were looking for big silage production swards while those farmers in southern Ireland look for better grazing varieties.

He said they had varieties coming on stream now which were superseding those from the past.

Some of the work is now on producing new high yielding tetraploids, giving a big bulk of production and among these are Malone but a new one not yet on the commercial lists yet called Fintona, has the potential to be one of the highest yielding varieites in the UK. It will not be available until 2016.

He looked back over decades of plant breeding and said there was continual improvement in varieties. In 26 trials from 1975 to 2000, they analysed different weather conditions and found that grass yields were going up by around half a per cent per year.

In a wet summer, local farmers may see leaf spot, with black speckles and leaves turn brown and die. This has become more common in the west of the Province in wet years when they stop using fertilisers in the autumn and the sward becomes hungry.

David warned farmers to look at seed varieties in mixtures.

There were seed mixtures with New Zealand varieties which would suffer badly in typical Northern Ireland winters and he illustrated the point by showing a poor performing plot at Loughgall.

Digestibility and palatability were major issues for grass breeding. When developing varieties, they use them in real farming situations where they are exposed to a wide range of conditions.

Next week ..... How grassland farming in Europe compares with Northern Ireland.