DairyBio is the dairy industry’s leading bioscience research program. Its forage program projects like this one are designed to breed plants with higher yield, higher energy, improved digestibility and increased persistence, that will result in increased milk production. DairyBio aims to have cultivars available in 2030 that will improve pasture productivity by up to $800 per hectare per year, and through hybrids, boost the biomass of perennial and annual ryegrasses by 20%. This includes the integration of phenomics, tools that consider how the environment and genes interact, into commercial breeding.

Project description: Integrative Genomics-Assisted F1 Hybrid Breeding of Short Term Ryegrass (Italian and Westerworld) for Pasture Improvement: SI Allele Typing (Molecular marker technologies and protocols and service provision to select plants for generation of F1 IRG parental pools) (F1 Hybrid Italian Ryegrass Varieties (IRG))