Benchmarking oat hay yield and quality in SA & Vic

With the commercialisation of the National Oat Breeding program by Intergrain, an increased number of new varieties are expected to reach market. There is currently a lack of performance benchmarking of both hay yield and quality traits for the latest oaten hay varieties. Independent knowledge of how the latest varieties perform across environments is needed by export oat hay producers, agronomic consultants and exporters. This project will provide both biomass and quality information on new hay varieties compared to established hay varieties across SA and Vic in medium and high rainfall zones. In addition, research will be undertaken to compare hay sampling techniques including an evaluation of the impact of hay cutting time across multiple time-points in a day and the effect of duration between sampling and drying in an oven.