Weather
Following the relatively wet winter of 2024, there was a precipitous drop in rainfall in the key grass-growing months between March and June. This combined with the higher than average mean daily temperature resulted in a significant reduction to both herbage yield and seed yield, and almost no observable disease.
Polycross 2025
The polycross plants (potential new variety parents) were planted into the mud of January/February 2025 and subsequently baked for five months.
All remaining plants (~10k) were harvested quickly in the space of just over two weeks, with the earliest end date on record. The hay is in storage for threshing in December.
Plot Harvest 2025
The reduction in possible harvesting in 2025 due to drought has resulted in 9,089 trial plots cut, or to be cut in the next weeks, for comparison the planned plot-cuts of 2026 are 16,349. In 2025, 35% of cuts was for VCU-testing, which given higher labour and electricity costs for these trials, DSV spent more on work in plot harvesting in 2025 for variety/recommended list testing than on our own material. Of all species tested, perennial ryegrass was 80% of all plot-cuts.
Spaced Plant Nursery
An area was reserved for a nursery of 10,000 plants for installation in 2025 (the maximum that can reasonably be evaluated with a “grass team” of two FTE. With the hiring pause only the sward-survivor (plants collected from the plots at the end of testing) part was transplanted (1,950 plants). The remaining space was then planned to be used as a clone-garden step from the nursery in evaluation 2025, where elite clones are planted in mini-plants so that further traits such as digestibility can be assessed. However with the complete stop to grass-breeding concluded by the GrassX project this has stopped and the 2025 nursery will remain in the field until the area is due to be ploughed in January 2028.
Instead the unused area has been sown with a demo-test of various winter cover crops. Some more space remains in the field if anyone would like to utilize it for demo or research purposes (project must end before February 2027).
