World-leading plant research in Melbourne promises to deliver big gains to Australia’s dairy farmers, a Gardiner Foundation presentation was told last week.
Dr Luke Pembleton, from the Department of Economic Development, Jobs, Transport and Resources, said conventional ryegrass-breeding research that he was involved with at the Dairy Futures CRC would deliver improvements in forage yield and plant quality.
This conventional breeding research did not involve genetic modification, so was “without regulatory burden”, he said.
The research into plant quality allowed plant breeders to identify plants higher in water soluble carbohydrate and lower in nitrogen.
The genomic selection of pasture species – using genetic markers to identify specific traits – promised to significantly speed up the development of new varieties.
“It is particularly useful around the things that are difficult to measure, expensive to measure or must be measured late in the breeding cycle,” Dr Pembleton said.
“These are things such as sward base yield, herbage quality and persistency.
”Persistency is a good one.
“If you think about persistency in perennial ryegrass, we want our pastures to last for 10 to 20 years.
“So a breeding program has to assess for that long.
”With genomic selection, we can get that information on day one.
“So there’s opportunity for massive genetic gain through this technology.”