b'Trials for salt tolerance. Source: Pure SeedThe quality requirements usuallyexpression of said purposes can appear entail selecting for good disease resist- very similar. Turf and forage varieties ance, drought tolerance and recovery,both benefit from good rhizome produc-good spring green-up, and for faster estab- tion and persistence, but what is accepted lishment, as well as selecting for specificfor colour and leaf presentation of these properties that depend on the purpose.types may be two wildly different things. For turf purposes, wear tolerance, lawn quality and colour are the most impor- A COMPLICATED SPECIEStant quality demands, while for forageIt can take more than 10 years and up to 1 purposes biomass yield and feed qualitymillion Euros to bring a new P. pratensis are the key traits. variety to the market. Its a complicated And for all these traits, environmentalspecies in terms of breeding because its influences are huge, meaning that differentaposporous pseudogamous facultative varieties can outperform each other in dif- apomict. ferent environments. Hence, official trialsHenk van der Aa Christoph Grieder Thismeansthatunlikeother that are the basis of recommended vari- grasses, Smooth meadow grass requires ety lists are performed in each country tono pollination for it to develop seeds, serve as a basis for variety selection by cus- focuses on turf, but also has a small forageexplains van der Aa. Its difficult to create tomers in that specific country or region. P. pratensis breeding program. And,genetic variation because its hard to make For examples, since DSP/Agroscopesbecause Agroscope is a public breedercrossings. However, we have found a way main focus is the Swiss market, Grieder,with the mission to develop suitable vari- to reach an acceptable level (5-10%) of Ochsenbein and their colleagues focus oneties for Swiss agriculture, its only focuscrossing by using large amounts of pollen improving all the traits assessed in theis forage types. and adjusting day length, temperature and official trials for the Swiss National List ofIn terms of how the two types differ,light intensity. He adds that besides the Recommended Varieties, including biomassGrieder explains that biomass yield andlow crossing rate, another obstacle in Poa yield, disease resistance and digestibility. quality are much more important in foragebreeding is the fact that once a new prom-At Barenbrug the focus of breedingtypes, whereas sward density is moreising breeding line has been obtained, it is on the sports market, with wear toler- important in turf types. He adds that inmust be reverted back to the apomictic ance being the highest goal and its alsoturf types, the presence of endophyticform again. Otherwise, the offspring will the main focus at Columbia River Seeds,fungi that produce potentially toxic com- not remain homogenous. although Columbia has sub-types thatpounds is not an issue but is obviously Schumann explains that these target very specific buyers and markethighly undesired in forage types. challenges are the reason why he and placement in terms of colour, leaf type, Gyllenberg notes that while turfhis colleagues at DSV still conduct aggressiveness, density and more. At Pureand forage types of Poa may be generallyintensive evaluations of newly collected Seed Testing, P. pratensis is bred forextremely different in their purpose andecotype-material, and intensive selection both turf and forage purposes while DSVappearance, sometimes the phenotypicof off-types from different origins and 16IEUROPEAN SEEDIEUROPEAN-SEED.COM'