EMPIRE PASTURES

Hokitika Guardian, 9 January 1931, Page 5

EMPIRE PASTURES

BREEDING OF NEW GRASSES

HOPEFUL EXPERIMENTS

A former student of Victoria University College, Dr. Robert W bite, the son of Dr. R. White, who at one time practised in Willis Street, and now 'head of the big Plant Breeding Station at Aberystw> •th, Wales.

The first standing crop of grasses scientifically bred and selected with the financial backing of the Empire Marketing Board and grown in Britain is there, and this crop is the beginning of an attempt to keep £1,000,-; 000 in Britain.

Field trials have shown that the sheep actually prefer pedigree pastures to those sown with ordinary seed, without any hesitation selecting the station’s special stocks in preference to the ordinary variety.

The whole world was combed for the grasses for the breeding sfation and these, when established, were then grown in small experimental plots. So that the grasses should not be pollinated by the wind. 30 pollen proof greenhouses were erected, and in these the purity of these specially hand pollinated families is guarded with an unrelaxing vigilance.

New Zealand is taking particular interest in these grasses, and the plant research station at Massey College is co-operating with Aberystwyth, and the other Dominions; are also keenly interested in the project, since gia&s is the. Empire’s largest crop, The Welsh plant hopes to put into the hands of the British fanner pedigree grasses which are very much sup-'' erior to foreign strains in yield, length of life, and leafiness. At the present time the grass seed market is an expanding one, and it lias been estimated that over a million acres are sown down to grass every year, while arable land is decreasing. The station harvest is an unprecedented one in the annals of British

farming, and patches of the new crop, of a, darker gold than wheat, have kept the local farmers much interested for months past. It is an exceptionally higdi yielding and hardy strain of coekfoot of which the scientists are hoping great things. There is not enough seed to sell direct to farmers for pastures anil meadows, and these pedigree families are to emigrate to the Dominions to be “grown, on,” and. if successful there, “to populate the pastures of the Empire.”