Track 4-1-3: Breeding Range Grasses and Legumes for Biomass and Stress Tolerance
Description
Perennial grasses are high yielding, pest resistant and less demanding in terms of soil (Peeters, 2008), they are the most important source of roughage. Each species has certain valuable features that make it unique among others and which are desirable to be highlighted for ensuring high productivity, good forage quality, plasticity, strength of various stress conditions, as well as winter hardiness, which is particularly important characteristic of northern latitudes. It is the main task of breeders, as far as possible to combine all the aforesaid properties into one breed. In order to create such a universal variety the breeders of perennial grasses carry out hybridisation outside the borders of one species. At present the work with Festulolium hybrids is important in order to combine the modesty, hardiness and perennity of fescue with high forage quality characteristic of ryegrass in one variety.
At the Latvia University of Agriculture Research Institute of Agriculture (LLU RIA) in Skriveri the breeding work of perennial grasses has been performed for a long time and during the period of 35 years several varieties of species widely used in forage production have been created, including Phleum pratense, Lolium perenne, Festuca pratensis, and Festulolium hybrids.
Included in
The Results of Breeding Perennial Grasses: The Evaluation of Developed Dactylis glomerata Hybrids
Perennial grasses are high yielding, pest resistant and less demanding in terms of soil (Peeters, 2008), they are the most important source of roughage. Each species has certain valuable features that make it unique among others and which are desirable to be highlighted for ensuring high productivity, good forage quality, plasticity, strength of various stress conditions, as well as winter hardiness, which is particularly important characteristic of northern latitudes. It is the main task of breeders, as far as possible to combine all the aforesaid properties into one breed. In order to create such a universal variety the breeders of perennial grasses carry out hybridisation outside the borders of one species. At present the work with Festulolium hybrids is important in order to combine the modesty, hardiness and perennity of fescue with high forage quality characteristic of ryegrass in one variety.
At the Latvia University of Agriculture Research Institute of Agriculture (LLU RIA) in Skriveri the breeding work of perennial grasses has been performed for a long time and during the period of 35 years several varieties of species widely used in forage production have been created, including Phleum pratense, Lolium perenne, Festuca pratensis, and Festulolium hybrids.
