Improved Perennial Grasses Project (P1 FP01)

The Improved Perennial Grasses project is evaluating recently bred temperate perennial grass cultivars for areas currently marginal for perennial grasses on the inland slopes of the Great Dividing Range in Victoria and New South Wales. It builds upon the work done by CRC Salinity and CSIRO to create new cultivars of cocksfoot, tall fescue and phalaris tolerant of low rainfall, prolonged summer drought and soils with high acidity and high aluminum levels.

The new cultivars will be water efficient, making them suitable complements to lucerne in phase farming systems in relevant regions and more reliable in drier climate scenarios. A critical part of this project will be the development of optimum grazing management practices for these new cultivars to be delivered as agronomy extension packages.

Objectives:

• Develop a persistent, drought tolerant tall fescue to extend the species’ area of adaptation into lower and less reliable rainfall regions receiving a high proportion of their annual rain in summer (500-600mm per year)
• Develop persistent, drought tolerant, summer dormant cocksfoot and phalaris cultivars with increased nutritive value for low input recharge areas and acid soils in areas receiving 400-600mm rainfall per year. The selection program will capitalise on attributes of acid tolerance and readily available seed harvesting and establishment technology for these reliable low input grasses
• Develop establishment and management packages for the new cultivars to assist with their commercial uptake.

Activities

A genotype by environment experiment has been established at five locations in central and western Victoria, and southern and northern NSW, evaluating the new cocksfoot, tall fescue and phalaris lines in comparison with their respective commercial cultivars.

Three grazing management experiments have been established in northern NSW, central and western Victoria to evaluate the performance of these elite lines under grazed conditions. Two experiments have been established in the ACT and northern NSW to investigate the expression of the summer dormancy trait for a wide range of new and existing cultivars. 

Two experiments were sown more recently in Victoria to identify the most suitable companion legumes for new elite lines of the perennial grasses. An experiment was also sown in southern NSW to demonstrate innovative pasture mixtures to increase the resilience of perennial-based swards.

For further information about this project, email Project Leader, Steve Clark.