Land For Grasslands Research

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30937, 18 December 1965, Page 10

Land For Grasslands Research

Every aspect of grasslands research would benefit from the Government’s action in purchasing an addi-

tional block of Manawatu land for experimental purposes, said Dr. L. Corkill, director of the Grasslands Division of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research in Palmerston North. The purchase had been announced by the Minister of Science, Mr Taiboys. The land involved is a farm in the Lockwood area, and consists of 309 acres of flat country backing on to the Oroua river.

“This is a major step forward for the Grasslands Division,” said Dr. Corkill. "At a single stroke, the division’s research area has been increased from 60 acres to nearly 370 acres. “The most important result is that we will now be able to use the grazing animal in experimental work to a much greater extent than has been possible on our limited area in the past. Thus we will be able to test the interactions of different pasture plants and various practices in

management of both pastures and animals in terms of their actual effect on animal production—and on a scale more closely related to farm practice. The results, therefore, can be more realistic. “The new area will facilitate an expansion of the collaborative studies by Grasslands and Plant Chemistry Division workers on the nutritive values of pasture varieties. It will now be possible to test, on pilotscale farms, the results already obtained on very small numbers of animals. Such tests will be of great assistance to our plant breeders in developing new varieties for high nutritive quality as well as high production of herbage. “Apart from these major benefits, the new area will bring many other advantages to the division’s work. “It will greatly ease the problem of maintaining good soil structures in our trial plots. In the past, the demands of a heavy research programme on a limited area of land have meant constant cultivation with little oppor-

tunity to free any of the land for spelling. “On the larger area, it will be easier to obtain pure seed supplies of bred varieties, because it will be possible to keep seed crops widely separated, thus preventing contamination by wind-blown pollen. “More land uncontaminated by hard seeds will be available for testing trueness to type of bred varieties under the Government seed certification scheme. This aspect will assume even greater importance when New Zealand - is admitted to the O.E,C.D. scheme for certification of seed in international trade. “The area will also be used for work on the improvement of cereals, forage plants and other crops for North Island conditions. This research will be carried on by a substation of the Crop Research Division, Lincoln, which is to be established here. “As yet, no New Zealand varieties of field crops have been bred specifically for the North Island. This is a gap in research which can now be filled.”