Novel grasslands for agricultural production and flood mitigation

As part of a five-year research programme 'SureRoot', novel Festulolium hybrid populations are being developed that, in addition to providing high forage yields, will also improve soil structure sufficiently to generate important ecosystem services such as flood mitigation. As an aid to their selection, representative genotypes from these populations are being monitored for their root growth and sequential changes over time by detailed root imaging. Significantly larger and deeper root systems were found in the Festulolium populations compared with the perennial ryegrass controls. For their agronomic performance, novel amphiploid Festulolium populations and ryegrass varieties are being assessed as monocultures and in binary mixtures with a wide range of white and red clover varieties in experimental field plots