Influence of testing procedure on evaluation of white clover (Trifolium repens L.)

peer-reviewedThis study examined data sets derived from the white clover cultivar evaluation programmes of AFBI (N. Ireland), and DAFF (Republic of Ireland) to determine whether elite performing genotypes are identifiable, independent of test procedure and leaf size factors. Genetic variation in yield and persistency, independent of the leaf size continuum effect, was observed. Identification of elite cultivars by breeders or testers therefore required readjustment of assessment standards to account for the mostly curvilinear relationships between performance and leaf size. The different testing procedures, involving cutting or grazing at different heights, frequencies and nitrogen rates changed the relative performances between the cultivars, making it difficult to predict performance potential beyond specific test conditions. The underlying causes for these changes in rankings was considered, including sensitivity to season and location, the antagonistic affects of defoliation pressure and companion grass competition, the independence of different seasonal profiles and the probable role of other morphological characteristics. In is concluded that testing authorities must calculate the management by leaf size relationships to adjust pass/fail standards if elite performing cultivars are to be correctly indentified

Evaluation of Lolium perenne L. cv. AberDart and AberDove for silage production

peer-reviewedThe objective of this study was to assess the value, for silage production, of intermediateheading Lolium perenne L. cultivars, AberDart and AberDove (diploid), bred for increased water-soluble carbohydrate (WSC) concentrations, relative to four control cultivars (Fennema, AberElan and Spelga (diploid), and Greengold (tetraploid)). Cultivars were evaluated for forage dry matter (DM) yield, ground cover and indirect laboratory measures of nutritional value and ensilability over 3 harvest years within intensive silage-production systems. AberDove was the most desirable diploid for silage production producing on average 316 kg/ha higher (2%) DM yield per annum, having a 10 g/kg higher (1%) dry matter digestibility (DMD) and, based primarily on a 6 g/L higher (19%) concentration of WSC expressed in the aqueous extract (WSCAE), offered the greatest potential to produce well preserved silage. Ensiling AberDart compared to the diploid controls offered a slightly greater probability of producing well preserved silage based on a modest increase of 2 g/L (6%) in WSCAE concentration. The dilemma for silage production is that AberDart, on average produced 558 kg/ha less (4%) DM yield per annum but had a greater (1%) DMD of 6 g/kg than the diploid controls. The tetraploid control had, on average, 13 and 8 g/kg higher (2% and 1%, respectively) DMD than AberDart and AberDove, but at a cost of lower ensilability with lower (6% and 21%, respectively) WSCAE values of 2 and 6 g/L. In its favour, the tetraploid control outyielded AberDart by, on average, 917 kg/ha DM per annum (7%) and produced comparable yields to AberDove. Final ground cover ratings were high (≥ 95%) for all cultivars. Evaluation of nutritional value and ensilability offers further grounds to differentiate and select cultivars for animal production potential.A Teagasc Walsh Fellowship, awarded to P. Conaghan and H. Howard, and the European Commission under the Fifth Framework Programme (QLK5-CT-2001-0498) supported this research

Grazing and ensiling of energy-rich grasses with elevated sugar contents for the sustainable production of ruminant livestock (Acronym: SweetGrass)

End of Project ReportPermanent grassland dominates the Irish landscape and for many decades perennial ryegrasses have been the main constituent in seed mixtures for grassland. The main attractions in favour of perennial ryegrass swards are that they: x produce high yields in response to fertiliser nitrogen x have a high digestibility when harvested at the appropriate growth stage x are relatively easy to preserve as silage due to their superior content of sugar x persist as permanent swards where favourable management practices prevail If the phenotype of perennial ryegrass were to be improved, one potentially desirable trait would be an elevated concentration of water-soluble carbohydrates (WSC). This could confer benefits in terms of: x further increase the probability of achieving a lactic acid dominant fermentation during ensilage. This could reduce the requirement for traditional acid- or sugar-based additives, improve the likelihood of a positive response from additives based on homofermentative lactic acid bacteria or alternatively eliminate the need for any or the currently available conventional additive. If its effect was to improve silage preservation this should positively impact on dry matter (DM) recovery, improve animal productivity and potential product quality, and reduce N loss to the environment. x improve the opportunity to produce silage with an elevated concentration of WSC. In circumstances where little or no supplementary concentrate feedstuffs were offered with silage, higher residual WSC could enhance silage intake and digestion, thereby improving animal productivity and reducing urinary loss of N. x produce a grass with higher intake characteristics during grazing, resulting in improved or more efficient animal production. x better synchronise or balance the supply of a rapidly fermentable carbon source (e.g. WSC) with soluble N compounds in the rumen of cattle or sheep. This could be important with grazing animals in spring and particularly in autumn when grass N content can be relatively high. Improved synchronisation or balance could potentially improve animal productivity and reduce urinary loss of N.European Union Fifth Framework funded project (QLK5-CT-2001-0498

Irish Grassland Research — main achievements and advancements in the past 60 yrs and where to progress to next

peer-reviewedIn the last 60 yr Irish grassland production has increased substantially in no small part due to high-quality fundamental grassland research. Increased production from grassland has arisen from improved understanding (research and practice) of soil and plant nutrition, plant physiology and variety improvement, while improved understanding of feed evaluation, ruminant nutrition, grazing management and silage technology has contributed to increased utilisation of grassland. Annual grass DM production varies from 12.7 to 15.0 t DM/ha based on Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine grass variety trials. More recent data from PastureBase Ireland indicate that average annual grass production (2020) on efficient dairy and dry stock farms is 13.5 and 10.0 t DM/ha, respectively. Ireland is now one of the world leaders in grassland research, particularly in the area of grazing utilisation, the development and use of grassland databases, decision support systems and grass selection indices for grass varieties. Future pasture-based systems must extend beyond food production to deliver additional benefits to farmers, to consumers and the wider society. Future systems will require more robust grazing animals with healthier functional traits, more diverse swards supporting improved animal performance and require fewer fertiliser and chemical inputs, and will support more biodiversity and enhanced carbon storage

Using variable importance measures to identify a small set of SNPs to predict heading date in perennial ryegrass.

peer-reviewedPrior knowledge on heading date enables the selection of parents of synthetic cultivars that are well matched with respect to time of heading, which is essential to ensure plants put together will cross pollinate. Heading date of individual plants can be determined via direct phenotyping, which has a time and labour cost. It can also be inferred from family means, although the spread in days to heading within families demands roguing in first generation synthetics. Another option is to predict heading date from molecular markers. In this study we used a large training population consisting of individual plants to develop equations to predict heading date from marker genotypes. Using permutation-based variable selection measures we reduced the marker set from 217,563 to 50 without impacting the predictive ability. Opportunities exist to develop a cheap assay to sequence a small number of regions in linkage disequilibrium with heading date QTL in thousands of samples. Simultaneous use of these markers in non-linkage based marker-assisted selection approaches, such as paternity testing, should enhance the utility of such an approach

Genomic prediction of crown rust resistance in Lolium perenne

peer-reviewedBackground Genomic selection (GS) can accelerate genetic gains in breeding programmes by reducing the time it takes to complete a cycle of selection. Puccinia coronata f. sp lolli (crown rust) is one of the most widespread diseases of perennial ryegrass and can lead to reductions in yield, persistency and nutritional value. Here, we used a large perennial ryegrass population to assess the accuracy of using genome wide markers to predict crown rust resistance and to investigate the factors affecting predictive ability. Results Using these data, predictive ability for crown rust resistance in the complete population reached a maximum of 0.52. Much of the predictive ability resulted from the ability of markers to capture genetic relationships among families within the training set, and reducing the marker density had little impact on predictive ability. Using permutation based variable importance measure and genome wide association studies (GWAS) to identify and rank markers enabled the identification of a small subset of SNPs that could achieve predictive abilities close to those achieved using the complete marker set. Conclusion Using a GWAS to identify and rank markers enabled a small panel of markers to be identified that could achieve higher predictive ability than the same number of randomly selected markers, and predictive abilities close to those achieved with the entire marker set. This was particularly evident in a sub-population characterised by having on-average higher genome-wide linkage disequilibirum (LD). Higher predictive abilities with selected markers over random markers suggests they are in LD with QTL. Accuracy due to genetic relationships will decay rapidly over generations whereas accuracy due to LD will persist, which is advantageous for practical breeding applications.This work received funding from the Irish Department of Agriculture Food and the Marine DAFM (RSF 11/S/109) and Teagasc core funding. SKA is supported by a Teagasc PhD Walsh Fellowship. SLB has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 658031

BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA MANAGEMENT COMPETENCIES FOR ACCEPTING EU FUNDS CAN EU FUNDS HELP IN DEVELOPING BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA ECONOMY, AND HOW TO MAKE THEM AVAILABLE TO BUSINESS ENTITIES

The main question the paper wants to answer is can EU funds help in developing B&H economy, and how to make them available to business entities. Bosnia and Herzegovina is one of the least developed countries in Europe, and it is a country that has not progressed when it comes to transition process and the EU accession. The conducted research on management in companies (corporate management), on officials in government bodies and parliamentary parties (state management), and also on students, point to possible solutions; how to stop the negative trends in business, employment and poverty, as well as how to speed up the process of the Euro Atlantic integration of B&H. One of the basic results of this research concludes that B&H presence in Europe is not a problem, but the fact that Europe (its value, social and economic systems) is not present in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Structural reforms and faster transition can create conditions for a faster economic development, and using EU funds for those purposes and (especially) for economic development can simultaneously be a motivation for a faster social and economic transition and the accession of B&H to the EU. Management in private companies are undoubtedly oriented in that direction, they expect the right preconditions and environment in order to be able to apply for EU funds. Those possibilities will mostly depend on the capability and efficiency of the state management . Therefore, there must be a persistent program for increasing the efficiency of the state management in B&H and for speeding up the EU accession process

Order enables efficient electron-hole separation at an organic heterojunction with a small energy loss.

Donor-acceptor organic solar cells often show low open-circuit voltages (V OC) relative to their optical energy gap (E g) that limit power conversion efficiencies to ~12%. This energy loss is partly attributed to the offset between E g and that of intermolecular charge transfer (CT) states at the donor-acceptor interface. Here we study charge generation occurring in PIPCP:PC61BM, a system with a very low driving energy for initial charge separation (E g-E CT ~ 50 meV) and a high internal quantum efficiency (η IQE ~ 80%). We track the strength of the electric field generated between the separating electron-hole pair by following the transient electroabsorption optical response, and find that while localised CT states are formed rapidly (<100 fs) after photoexcitation, free charges are not generated until 5 ps after photogeneration. In PIPCP:PC61BM, electronic disorder is low (Urbach energy <27 meV) and we consider that free charge separation is able to outcompete trap-assisted non-radiative recombination of the CT state

A Simple Molecular Design Strategy for Delayed Fluorescence toward 1000 nm.

Harnessing the near-infrared (NIR) region of the electromagnetic spectrum is exceedingly important for photovoltaics, telecommunications, and the biomedical sciences. While thermally activated delayed fluorescent (TADF) materials have attracted much interest due to their intense luminescence and narrow exchange energies (ΔEST), they are still greatly inferior to conventional fluorescent dyes in the NIR, which precludes their application. This is because securing a sufficiently strong donor-acceptor (D-A) interaction for NIR emission alongside the narrow ΔEST required for TADF is highly challenging. Here, we demonstrate that by abandoning the common polydonor model in favor of a D-A dyad structure, a sufficiently strong D-A interaction can be obtained to realize a TADF emitter capable of photoluminescence (PL) close to 1000 nm. Electroluminescence (EL) at a peak wavelength of 904 nm is also reported. This strategy is both conceptually and synthetically simple and offers a new approach to the development of future NIR TADF materials