Thursday, June 25, 2009

By Peter Shipway, SAC 

There are eight new provisional first choice Perennial Ryegrasses on the 2009 -10 Recommended List of Grasses and Clovers for Scotland and one new White Clover variety. 

Genesis and Moyola are two new very promising early heading Perennial Ryegrasses that set new standards for yield under both conservation and grazing and exhibit exceptionally good early spring growth.  The intermediate Perennial Ryegrasses, Solomon and Contrast and the late heading AberChoice

all provide good solid all-round performance, good conservation yields, good yields under grazing and  all coupled with good quality. AberFarrell (intermediate) and the late heading varieties Drumbo(diploid)

and AberBite (tetraploid) offer farmers good grazing yields and exceptionally good digestibility under both grazing and cutting. 

The addition of Violin to the medium leaf size group of White Clover varieties provides a promising addition to this group. Figures for production and persistence suggest Violin will be a promising rival to the Fully Recommended variety, Avoca. 

In other changes to the Scottish Recommended List, the varieties Kilrea ( E. PRG), AberStar, Gandalf and Orantas (Int. diploid PRG) and Dunluce ( Int. tetraploid PRG) all confirm their first choice recommendation for 2009 -10. 

SAC Technical Note 616 (available on-line at www.sac.ac.uk/publications) lists all varieties on The Scottish Recommended List.  More detailed variety information is available from seed merchants

participating in the Grass Levy Scheme for Scotland. 

For further information, please contact:-