There are four main points you have to consider when choosing the right perennial rye-grass: endophyte strain (relative to insect pressure), flowering/heading date, ploidy (tetraploid or diploid), breeding and endophyte strains.
Choosing and understanding the correct endophyte strain is important for the longevity of your pastures, with insect pests stripping valuable dry matter and can even kill rye-grass pastures.
Black beetle, cockchafers, lucerne flea, grass grub and field crickets (just to name a few) pressure the persistence of perennial pastures.
SE, AR1, AR37 and NEA2 are all novel endophytes and have been developed by plant breeders to help protect grasses from insect attack.
Standard heading rye-grasses have good early spring growth when quality is at its best.
However, in mid-spring when growth rates are high, pasture quality may deteriorate when feed supply becomes a surplus and grazing is not precise.
Late flowering varieties such as Matrix SE (+23 days), Base AR37 (22 days) and Reward Endo5 (24 days after Nui) come into their own as the earlier varieties lose their quality.
The industry is benchmarked and defined relative to the variety Nui, which has a heading date of zero.
Heading date is when 50 per cent of plants have emerged seed-heads.
Heading/flowering date is important, as it controls the extent of early spring production and late spring quality.
Seed head development reduces feed quality in late spring and the heading date determines when this occurs.
Diploids are densely tillered, competitive with weeds, cope with lower fertility, ideal for grass-to-grass situations, can handle wetter environments and can be set-stocked or rotationally grazed.
Meanwhile, tetraploids are fast to establish, extremely tasty and palatable, excellent pasture utilisation, very high quality, higher animal dry matter intakes, great for silage and hay quality and clover friendly.
Perennial rye-grass has evolved over millions of years, and just like top quality breeding stock, it's important to understand the bloodlines of your grasses and whether by nature they belong on your farm in your environment and able to survive your conditions.
