The effect of grass genotype and spring management on the nutritive value of mid-summer ryegrass swards

End of project reportThe objective of this project was to investigate the environmental, morphological and management factors that control reproductive initiation and development in Lolium perenne L. (perennial ryegrass) and their influence on mid-season sward quality. These factors were assessed on eight perennial ryegrass cultivars through spaced plant and plot studies. The first part of this project determined the effects of meteorological conditions and latitude on reproductive initiation and ear emergence of cultivars over two consecutive years. It was concluded that the critical day length requirement for reproductive initiation varies between perennial ryegrass cultivars and is independent of latitude and the normal range of conditions. Using this information a strong correlation (r2 = 0.94) was found between the critical day length for ear initiation and the ten year standardised ear emergence dates of the cultivars. This correlation was sufficiently robust to predict the critical initiation date for any perennial ryegrass cultivar on a UK recommended list or on the EU common catalogue by using their heading dates from the UK Plant Breeders Rights trials at Crossnacreevy. Large variation was observed for secondary initiation and re-heading between cultivars of similar and varying maturity, which is a major factor reducing mid-season sward quality. The propensity for initiation of re-heading was strongly influenced by the severity of defoliation (intense to very lax), but there was also evidence to suggest that critical day length post-solstice, may determine the latest date when further reproductive initiation could occur. Differences in plant growth modes were clearly evident as the sward structure, plant morphology and nutritive compositions differed significantly between cultivars during the mid-season. Defoliation management also significantly affected mid-season sward structure, morphology and nutritive composition. While the effect of defoliation height on the sward physical and chemical compositions was inconclusive, an intensive (30 mm) defoliation resulted in plants returning to a vegetative growth mode earlier compared to a lax (60 mm) defoliation treatment. It was observed that defoliation at a critical growth stage can significantly affect subsequent sward structures. Delaying initial spring defoliation resulted in a greater leaf proportion and swards of greater herbage quality in the plot study. This study, therefore, established the need for more detailed evaluation of cultivars by national testing authorities to allow farmers to select cultivars for grazing use that will optimise animal intake and performance

Measurement of Grassland Management Practice on Commercial Dairy Farms

End of Project ReportVisual assessment (>4 cm) was found to be the preferred method of pasture mass estimation. Grass budgeting with the use of grass cover measurement, was found to be the most effective aid to good grazing management. Closing farm grass cover in late November/early December should be 350 to 450 kg DM/ha with a range in covers of 200 to 900. Target farm grass covers of 550 to 600 kg DM/ha at turnout at stocking rate of 2.75 cow/ha. Pre-grazing yields at turnout should not be less than 1000 kg DM/ha, giving daily grass allowance of not less than 5 kg DM/cow. The available grass supply in Spring should be budgeted so as to finish the first grazing rotation between the 10th-20th April (grass supply equal grass demand). During the main grazing season (May to August), grazing grass cover should be maintained at 900 to 1000 kg DM/ha or 200 to 240 kg DM/cow. Pre-grazing yield should be maintained at 1800 to 2000 kg DM/ha, with post-grazing residuals at 150 to 200 kg DM/ha (5.5 to 6.5 cm post-grazing height). Stocking rates of greater than 4.5 cow/ha on the grazing area in May/June mostly resulted in inadequate grass supply at some periods over that time. Rotation length can be increased from 21 days in mid/late August to 35 days in late September, allowing grass cover to increase to 1100 to 1300 kg DM/ha. Last rotation should be 25 to 35 days, with first paddocks rested from the 10th to 15th October. Greater use of grass measurements at farm level will allow dairy farmers to obtain a greater proportion of the dairy herd’s feed demand from grazed grass, and higher cow performance.Teagasc acknowledge with gratitude the support of Irish Fertiliser Industries, FBD Trust and Dairy Levy Farmer Funds in the financing of this research project

The effect of different levels of spring grass supply and stocking rate on the performance and intake of cows in early lactation

End of project reportGrazed herbage can supply nutrients to dairy cows at a lower cost than alternative feeds (Shalloo et al., 2004). Therefore, the objective of pasture-based systems must be to maximize the proportion of grazed grass in the diet of the dairy cow (Dillon et al., 2005). The extension of the grazing season into the early spring period can be facilitated by ceasing grazing of pastures earlier in autumn which allows grass to accumulate, thereby ensuring an adequate herbage supply in early spring when animal demand exceeds grass growth/supply (O’Donovan, 2000). Grazing pastures in early spring has previously been shown to increase herbage utilization and condition swards for subsequent grazing rotations (O’Donovan et al., 2004; Kennedy et al., 2006)

Prediction of cull cow carcass characteristics from live weight and body condition score measured pre slaughter

peer-reviewedA study was conducted to provide information on the degree of carcass finish of Irish cull cows and to investigate the usefulness of live animal measurements for the prediction beef breeds (albeit with a moderate R2 value compared to the carcass weight prediction) using objective, non-intrusive and easily measured live animal measurements, should be of benefit to farmers finishing cull cows in Ireland. of cull cow carcass characteristics. Live weight (LW) and body condition score (BCS) were recorded on cows entering an Irish commercial slaughter facility between September and November, 2005. Data pertaining to sire breed, age and carcass characteristics were collected and subsequently collated for each cow. For analysis, cows (n = 2163) were subdivided into three breed categories: dairy breed sired by Holstein/ Friesian (FR), sired by early-maturing beef breeds (EM) and sired by late-maturing beef breeds (LM). The proportion of cows slaughtered at the desired (TARGET) carcass standard (cold carcass weight ≥ 272 kg, carcass conformation class ≥ P+ and carcass fat class ≥ 3) was low (on average 0.30), but did differ (P < 0.001) between the dairy and beef breed categories (0.22, 0.47 and 0.53 for FR, EM and LM categories, respectively). Regression procedures were used to develop equations to predict cold carcass weight, carcass conformation score, carcass fat score and proportion in the TARGET category from LW and BCS. Equations predicting cold carcass weight had high R2 values for all breed categories (0.81, 0.85 and 0.79 for the FR, EM and LM, respectively). Equations predicting carcass fatness had moderate R2 values for the beef breed categories (0.65 and 0.59 for the EM and LM, respectively). Equations predicting carcass conformation and the TARGET category yielded lower R2 values. The successful prediction of carcass weight for all breed categories and of carcass fatness for th

The implications of the shared genetics of psychiatric disorders

Recent genomic studies have revealed the highly polygenic nature of psychiatric disorders, including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and major depressive disorder. Many of the individual genetic associations are shared across multiple disorders in a way that points to extensive biological pleiotropy and further challenges the biological validity of existing diagnostic approaches. Here we argue that the existence of risk alleles specific to a single diagnostic category is unlikely. We also highlight some of the important clinical repercussions of pleiotrop

Evaluation of an automatic f-structure annotation algorithm against the PARC 700 dependency bank

An automatic method for annotating the Penn-II Treebank (Marcus et al., 1994) with high-level Lexical Functional Grammar (Kaplan and Bresnan, 1982; Bresnan, 2001; Dalrymple, 2001) f-structure representations is described in (Cahill et al., 2002; Cahill et al., 2004a; Cahill et al., 2004b; O’Donovan et al., 2004). The annotation algorithm and the automatically-generated f-structures are the basis for the automatic acquisition of wide-coverage and robust probabilistic approximations of LFG grammars (Cahill et al., 2002; Cahill et al., 2004a) and for the induction of LFG semantic forms (O’Donovan et al., 2004). The quality of the annotation algorithm and the f-structures it generates is, therefore, extremely important. To date, annotation quality has been measured in terms of precision and recall against the DCU 105. The annotation algorithm currently achieves an f-score of 96.57% for complete f-structures and 94.3% for preds-only f-structures. There are a number of problems with evaluating against a gold standard of this size, most notably that of overfitting. There is a risk of assuming that the gold standard is a complete and balanced representation of the linguistic phenomena in a language and basing design decisions on this. It is, therefore, preferable to evaluate against a more extensive, external standard. Although the DCU 105 is publicly available, 1 a larger well-established external standard can provide a more widely-recognised benchmark against which the quality of the f-structure annotation algorithm can be evaluated. For these reasons, we present an evaluation of the f-structure annotation algorithm of (Cahill et al., 2002; Cahill et al., 2004a; Cahill et al., 2004b; O’Donovan et al., 2004) against the PARC 700 Dependency Bank (King et al., 2003). Evaluation against an external gold standard is a non-trivial task as linguistic analyses may differ systematically between the gold standard and the output to be evaluated as regards feature geometry and nomenclature. We present conversion software to automatically account for many (but not all) of the systematic differences. Currently, we achieve an f-score of 87.31% for the f-structures generated from the original Penn-II trees and an f-score of 81.79% for f-structures from parse trees produced by Charniak’s (2000) parser in our pipeline parsing architecture against the PARC 700

Adding value to cull cow beef

End of project reportThis project addressed the prospects of increasing the value of cull cow beef and examined the potential of a number of different management and dietary strategies. In Ireland, the national cow herd contributes 350,000 animals to total beef production annually, which represents 22% of all cattle slaughtered (DAF, 2007). A dominant feature of beef production in Ireland is the disposal of cows from the dairy and beef industries, the time of year at which culling occurs influences the number of cows available for slaughter. Suitability of a cow for slaughter is generally not a consideration for dairy or beef farmers

Blood pressure responses in healthy older people to 50 g carbohydrate drinks with differing glycaemic effects

The aim of the present study was to determine the effects on blood pressure response of 50 g carbohydrate drinks with differing glycaemic effects in ten healthy elderly subjects (age >65 years; randomized crossover design). Systolic (SBP), diastolic (DBP) and mean arterial (MAP) blood pressure, heart rate and plasma glucose levels were determined following ingestion of equal volumes (379 ml) of water and 50 g carbohydrate drinks with differing reported glycaemic indices (GI) (surrogate marker for glycaemic effect): (1) low-GI: Apple & Cherry Juice; (2) intermediate-GI: Fanta Orange; (3) high-glucose. Glucose (SBP and DBP P,0·001; MAP P¼0·005) and Fanta Orange (SBP P¼0·005; DBP and MAP P,0·001) ingestion caused a significant decrease in BP whilst blood pressure increased (SBP P¼0·008; MAP P¼0·005) from baseline following Apple & Cherry Juice ingestion. Water had no significant effect on postprandial blood pressure. Fanta Orange and Apple & Cherry Juice caused similar (P¼0·679) glycaemic effects, which were significantly greater than water, but lower than glucose (P,0·001). There was no significant correlation between the glycaemic effect of the carbohydrate drinks and there was no change in blood pressure from baseline (SBP r 20·123, P¼0·509; DBP r 20·051, P¼0·784; MAP r 20·069, P¼0·712). Apple & Cherry Juice and Fanta Orange had similar glycaemic effects, but differing effects on blood pressure. Therefore, it is unlikely that the glycaemic effect of a drink can be used to predict the subsequent cardiovascular response.Renuka Visvanathan, Richard Chen, Michael Horowitz and Ian Chapma

Treebank-based acquisition of wide-coverage, probabilistic LFG resources: project overview, results and evaluation

This paper presents an overview of a project to acquire wide-coverage, probabilistic Lexical-Functional Grammar (LFG) resources from treebanks. Our approach is based on an automatic annotation algorithm that annotates “raw” treebank trees with LFG f-structure information approximating to basic predicate-argument/dependency structure. From the f-structure-annotated treebank we extract probabilistic unification grammar resources. We present the annotation algorithm, the extraction of lexical information and the acquisition of wide-coverage and robust PCFG-based LFG approximations including long-distance dependency resolution. We show how the methodology can be applied to multilingual, treebank-based unification grammar acquisition. Finally we show how simple (quasi-)logical forms can be derived automatically from the f-structures generated for the treebank trees

Strong domain variation and treebank-induced LFG resources

In this paper we present a number of experiments to test the portability of existing treebank induced LFG resources. We test the LFG parsing resources of Cahill et al. (2004) on the ATIS corpus which represents a considerably different domain to the Penn-II Treebank Wall Street Journal sections, from which the resources were induced. This testing shows an under-performance at both c- and f-structure level as a result of the domain variation. We show that in order to adapt the LFG resources of Cahill et al. (2004) to this new domain, all that is necessary is to retrain the c-structure parser on data from the new domain