The latest round of Primary Growth Partnership (PGP) funding has been spread across forestry, merino wool and arable farming organisations.

Agriculture and Forestry Minister David Carter said today $20 million would be split between the New Zealand Forest Owners Association, the Foundation for Arable Research and the New Zealand Merino Company (NZMC) reports The ODT. At slightly over $15m, NZMC will get the lion’s share of the funding, and with their own funding input included, the three government-industry partnerships will be worth over $45m.The government funds will be received over five to seven years and Mr Carter said the economic spin-offs could amount to billions of dollars “if the proposals’ scientific and market research and product development are brought to fruition”.

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Estimated breeding values (EBVs) remain a “black box” for farmers, but scientists are working to find out more about beef and sheep genetics, said Mike Goddard, from Australia’s University of Melbourne and Victoria.

He talked to about 100 stud and commercial farmers, as well as beef industry stalwarts, at a Beef Expo celebratory breakfast, in Feilding, last week reports The Manawatu Standard.Professor Goddard said EBVs work, but there are unknown factors.”We know how EBVs work. But the genes that contribute to them – we don’t know.”He said there were many genes that contribute to factors such as growth rate, meat yield, and fertility, for example, but only one for colour.As if that is not enough of a problem, when it comes to beef breeds, markers need to be relevant across many breeds.

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Improved productivity could reduce on-farm greenhouse gas emissions from sheep by up to 12%, according to the author of a study which calculated the carbon footprint of sheep. Stewart Ledgard, a principal AgResearch scientist, said a higher lambing percentage and faster lamb growth rates offered the best options for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from sheep, as opposed to reducing fossil fuel use, which was low on sheep farms compared with other intensive agricultural systems.

Dr Ledgard said the 1.9kg of CO2-equivalent produced for each 100g portion of lamb exported to Europe, was “broadly consistent with other international studies of products derived from farmed, ruminant livestock reports The ODT. His study found 57% of the sheep carbon footprint was generated by the natural process of animals utilising pasture and producing methane during digestion, but it was a figure that has been decreasing.

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A two-day soil management workshop taking place in Cromwell at the end of June will be the biggest event of its type in the South Island in recent times. Co-organiser Cherryle Prew of the SoilFoodWeb Institute said it was a coup for the South Island to secure key note speaker Dr Christine Jones, an internationally renowned soils ecologist and founder of the Australian Soil Carbon Accreditation Scheme reports Scoop.

“Dr Jones is booked years in advance, so having her speak for a whole morning at the ”Farming Soils – Starting Today” workshop is a real honour,” she said. “She will be talking about the big picture; how the carbon, nitrogen and water cycles are intrinsically linked.  I think farmers will respect her years of experience working with landholders to restore water balance, increase biological activity and improve productivity”.

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Nervous and aggressive cattle are a pain in the wallet reports The Weekly Times. That is the finding of a study presented recently to the Midwest American Society of Animal Science, in Des Moines, Iowa. Gary Fike, beef cattle specialist for the Certified Angus Beef brand in the US, said docile cattle in a feedlot graded premium choice and prime at more than double the rate of nervous to very aggressive cattle. Docility in the feedlot paid off with better performance, improved carcass merit and reduced morbidity and treatment costs, Mr Fike said.

Data was collected on nearly 50,000 cattle from 18 Iowa feedlots over eight years, to 2009. Using a six-point scoring system, calves were grouped into three categories – docile (DC), restless (R) and nervous to very aggressive (NVA). Calves in the study had similar arrival weights, but the DC and R calves were on average 10 days younger than the NVA calves. DC calves made up for their age, gaining 1.45kg/day compared with NVAs 1.36kg and outweighing them by 17.69kg in final liveweight.

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A common pasture plant could help foraging ruminants ward off damaging gastrointestinal nematodes, like barber’s pole that can cause illness and death, US Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists report in the Gisborne Herald. Animal scientist Joan Burke at the ARS Dale Bumpers Small Farms Research Centre in Booneville, Arkansas, along with colleagues at several universities, has patented formulations of Sericea lespedeza, commonly referred to as Chinese bush clover.

The plant was introduced in the United States in the 1930s to minimise soil erosion. Adding the patented dry hay and pelleted forms of this plant to animal feed thwarts the reproductive cycles of gastrointestinal nematodes that are in the digestive tracts of goats and sheep. It is particularly effective in controlling the barber’s pole worm (Haemonchus contortus), a nematode that attaches to the animals’ abomasal (true stomach) wall and feeds on their blood. Female worms can produce more than 5,000 eggs per day that are shed in the animal’s manure.

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AS many as half of the Australia’s sheep producers are playing with danger, researchers now say – and the results could well prove tough to swallow reports The Land. They claim that in the pursuit of lean lamb, many stud breeders have inadvertently culled intramuscular fat – the key trait for tenderness – raising the risk of a consumer backlash. Stud breeders and commercial producers were taken aback by this revelation, announced at the final Sheep Co-operative Research Centre grower update in Glen Innes last Wednesday.

Meat and Livestock Australia (MLA) sheep geneticist, Dr Alex Ball, Armidale, told the gathering the correlation between fat covering (PFAT) and intramuscular fat (IMF) was far greater than anybody had imagined – in fact, three times greater than the link in beef.“Up until three months ago we (the industry) didn’t know what it was doing (to tenderness),” he said. The data had come straight out of the sire nucleus (comprising every bloodline available to commercial producers), half of which fell within the dry-eating-to-tough territory.

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NZ dairy farmers will next season have ready access to fresh sexed semen and embryos following successful on‐farm trials by breeding companies reports voxy.co.nz. Thanks to an agreement between US‐based Sexing Technologies, AgResearch and the Waikato Innovation Park , the technology became available this season to artificial breeding and embryo companies to offer farmers fresh sorted semen and embryos for the first time in NZ.

Liberty Genetics and Animal Breeding Services (ABS) initiated a trial to evaluate the use of sexed semen in the dairy industry. 4600 inseminations were carried out in the 2009 spring mating period and further trial work is planned. Results from the trial are promising and Liberty Genetics Managing Director, David Hayman, says, “There have been valuable lessons learnt through the trial process, particularly with regards to what is required to achieve acceptable conception rates with sexed semen.” ABS is implementing the use of sexed semen in embryo production and can see several promising applications.

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We trained them in the belief they would take up careers as agricultural scientists helping keep the NZ farmer out in front. So, where have they gone? There was a time when we farmers looked to scientists to give us the edge on our overseas competitors and that’s exactly what they did. Research stations such as Invermay led the world in every aspect of farming – from deer, molybdenum to biogas, our scientists were there reports Rural News.

We are talking the late 1970s and the mid-1980s,an era when research results were passed onto farmers with encouragement to try them out. There were farm advisory officers whose mission was to help farmers understand and use the research. Agricultural science leaders such as Dr Jock Allison believed getting research results out to farmers was just as important as the results. To his mind it was crazy leaving them on the shelf.

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Waikato farmers are being urged not to rely on supposed black beetle-resistant ryegrass like AR37 – and to spray their pastures with Round Up to get rid of the pest. Farmers attending a DairyNZ drought management field day at Carian and Sarah Tully’s farm, near Thames, complained about the damage the insect had done to their pastures, which were also suffering from drought damage reports The Waikato Times.

Peter Walters, who farms at Otorohanga, said his trial paddock of AR37 had a level of 60 beetles per square metre.”After two years of growing AR37 it’s destroyed.” DairyNZ scientist Chris Glassey said AR37 was not as resistant as first thought. “The larvae still feed on the roots of AR37, it only protects against adult black beetle,” he said.

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