New Grass Varieties Enhance Farming Competitiveness

Issued: Thursday, 20 June, 2002

Work on new types of grasses aimed at enhancing Ireland's competitive advantage in food production has been unveiled by Teagasc.

Teagasc plant breeders at Oak Park Research Centre, Carlow have already bred new grass varieties which have proven benefits in improved yield, higher quality and nutrition and extended early and late season growth patterns. Varieties such as Magician, Greengold and Sarsfield are already available to Irish farmers and are being used to improve output of milk and meat from grass.

Similar successes have taken place in clover breeding with new Teagasc bred varieties giving higher yields, improved disease resistance and requiring less nitrogen fertiliser, leading to reduced costs.

The Teagasc plant breeding team led by Dr Vincent Connolly, have now embarked on a new programme on molecular biotechnology which is aimed at producing grasses with the capacity to further capitalise on Ireland's natural advantage as a low-cost producer of quality food.

Details of the new programme were unveiled at the National Tillage Crops Open Day at Oak Park Research Centre. It involves the use of new scientific methods in producing grasses with superior yield and quality characteristics. New scientists have joined the Teagasc team at Oak Park and state of the art biotechnology facilities are under construction.

Visitors to the open day were told that 25 new potato varieties, bred by Teagasc researchers at Oak Park are now being used worlwide. A total of 30,000 tonnes of seed of these varieties are sold annually in 10 countries.

Rooster, now the leading potato variety in Ireland, was bred by Harry Kehoe and his team at Oak Park. Another Teagasc-bred variety, Cara has reached over 10% of the UK market and is also very popular in the Mediterranean area. A third variety, Colleen, is rapidly gaining popularity as a high quality early potato on the Irish markets. A number of new varieties are at an advanced stage of development and are expected to be launched over the coming years.

For information available at the open day, click here.