RYEGRASS INVESTIGATION

Taranaki Daily News, 17 June 1930, Page 9

RYEGRASS INVESTIGATION

HAWKE'S BAY STRAIN BEST. CONCLUSION FROM RESEARCH By Telegraph.—Press Association. Palmcrtson N., Last Night. A comprehensive report upon the investigation into ryegrass has been issued by Mr. E. Bruce Levy, agristologist fox the Department of Agriculture, and Mr. William Davies, of the Aberyswyth plant research station. It deals in detail with the two years’ concentrated work at the Palmerston North plant research station, together with several years of widely distributed trials and observations throughout the Dominion.

There is in the minds of the investigators no shadow of doubt that Hawke’s Bay ryegrass as a type is superior for New Zealand conditions to any other commercial strain from any other source. The report emphasises that strain counts more than species and that the source of origin is a factor to be reckoned with in buying grass and clover seeds. The department is fully alive to the situation created by this work, and in order to give some means of guarantee as to the type and the district of origin has inaugurated a scheme of ryegrass certification. The scheme is recognised as the germ of an organisation that will surpass in economic importance the stud book of the stock breeder and the Babcock test for the dairy cow. The support that seed merchants and farmers are giving this movement must ultimately be reflected in pedigree seed production, not only for New Zealand’s own requirements but substantially as a basis of a great export trade. Evidence collected on Hawke’s Bay and Poverty Bay flats led to the definite conclusion that the Hawke s Bay strain will maintain itself as a dominant factor in the sward for any number of years.