United Kingdom
July 8, 2015
William Gilbert (right), Germinal managing director, and Germinal seed production manager John Fairey with the NIAB Variety Cup, awarded to the Aber High Sugar Grass AberGreen in 2015
The perennial ryegrass AberGreen has become only the second forage grass variety to receive the prestigious Variety Cup from the National Institute of Agricultural Botany (NIAB).
Professor Atole Marshall, Head of Plant Breeding at IBERS, said: “We are delighted to receive the NIAB Variety Cup for the second time, in recognition of the dedication and passion of the talented, world-recognised team of grass breeders at IBERS. AberGreen perfectly illustrates our aim of breeding varieties not only for their excellent combination of yield, quality and ground cover but also for traits such as water soluble carbohydrate content which delivers both improved animal performance and environmental benefits.”
Outstanding dry matter yield combined with exceptional D-value make the intermediate diploid AberGreen one of the very highest ranked perennial ryegrasses for total Metabolisable Energy (ME) yield. With its higher water soluble carbohydrate content but without a proportional increase in protein, AberGreen exhibits what breeders describe as close to the optimum forage protein-to-energy balance for efficient livestock production.
“Ruminant animals are poor converters of grass protein into meat and milk,” explains Germinal’s Ben Wixey. “This is largely due to the imbalance between readily available energy and protein within grass. In a grazing context this commonly results in only around 20% of the protein from herbage actually being used for production. The rest is excreted, which is financially costly for the farmer and problematic for the environment as nitrogenous waste converts to greenhouse gases.
“There are therefore real benefits in providing a better protein-to-energy balance in grass, and this is exemplified more than ever before in AberGreen. With the higher water soluble carbohydrate in the grass providing more readily available energy in the rumen, more of the nitrogen released from the breakdown of protein is used by the rumen microbes for the production of meat and milk, and less is excreted as greenhouse gases.”
® Aber is a registered grademark of Germinal Holdings Ltd.
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