News Release:
UNE aids research towards drought-tolerant clover
| Date 18/11/03 No 207/03 Students at the University of New England are contributing to an international plant-breeding program that has the potential to double the area of Australia's white clover pastures. White clover is an important component of livestock pastures in temperate, high-rainfall areas of Australia. Research by Ben Mason and Matthew Thompson, final-year Bachelor of Rural Science students at UNE, is helping to develop drought-tolerant varieties of white clover for regions too dry to sustain currently-available commercial varieties. NSW Agriculture's white clover improvement program, being conducted in conjunction with AgResearch Ltd (New Zealand), includes a future project on the development of drought-tolerant varieties. The scientist leading preparations for the project, NSW Agriculture's Dr John Ayres, said: "NSW Agriculture has developed a number of drought-tolerant lines of white clover from genotypes selected for their survival under drought conditions. Ben has evaluated the drought tolerance and Matthew the germination and early-growth characteristics of some of these lines."
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Ben's results indicate that some of the lines have high potential for performance under low rainfall or drought conditions. One of the lines in particular showed outstanding "leaf size stability" in response to a variety of such conditions. Matthew's results highlighted important differences between the lines in seed quality, seedling vigour, and first-year performance. "The breeding project will benefit from the involvement of students such as Ben and Matthew, and academics like their supervisor at UNE, Associate Professor Jim Scott," Dr Ayres said. "Such collaboration enables us to include important detailed work in our projects. The breeding program has also benefited from close collaboration with Dr Robert Murison from UNE's School of Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science, who has assisted the students in the use of advanced statistical techniques to design the experiments and analyse the results." Dr Scott, from UNE's School of Rural Science and Agriculture said: "Having good links to important national plant breeding programs like this provides our students with valuable exposure to high-quality research, resulting in graduates better-equipped for the future, and helping the breeding program in the process." Media contact: Associate Professor Jim Scott, School of Rural Science and Agriculture, UNE, Armidale (02) 6773 2436 or 0417 021 232, or Jim Scanlan, Public Relations, UNE, Armidale (02) 6773 3049. |
