Forage crops play a crucial role in livestock agriculture, providing feed for animals and contributing to the overall productivity and sustainability of the livestock industry. IBERS has a long history of forage crop research, improving genetic traits for enhanced yield, nutritional quality, and environmental resilience. IBERS science underpins 47 ABER varieties of grass and clover on the current UK National Variety List, commercialised by our long-term partner Germinal Horizon Ltd. Through interdisciplinary and commercial collaborations, IBERS aims to advance sustainable and resilient forage crop systems to support livestock agriculture and provide the science needed to support breeding and commercialisation of new varieties.

Breeding Goals

Long term goals in breeding that require inputs from fundamental research include: 

• Incorporation of genomics assisted breeding to accelerate genetic gain.
• Exploiting genome sequence data to better understand traits and direct crosses
• Use of new technology (drones, machine learning, AI) for phenotyping in the field.
• Breeding targets for zero carbon and climate friendly farming – carbon sequestration, root   growth, resilience to climate change, persistency. 
• Improvement of nutrient use efficiency to reduce inputs.
• Breeding forages with improved quality traits that reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. 
• Novel uses of forage crops, pulses and oats, such as extraction of protein for monogastric feed
  and plant-based diets. 
• Improved resilience of grain quality traits (oats) as demanded by millers and end-users. 
• Multistress tolerance & resilience to sudden adverse weather events (drought, waterlogging). 
• Improvement of breeding efficiency (accuracy of selection) using high throughput phenotyping. 
• Pre-breeding to identify novel alleles and increase genetic diversity.
• Understanding of adaptation- matching phenology to environment.
• Development of benchmarks for farmers and crop growth models.
• The addressing of the agricultural productivity gap through improvements in crop yield and yield stability.
• New methods of plant breeding (gene editing, speed breeding) and recombination control