Sub4Spring: finally, it’s spring!

Posted prepared by: Dryland Pastures Research Team – C. Teixeira; R. Lucas, S. Olykan, A. Mills and Prof. Derrick Moot Spring is the most important period for most pastoral farms in New Zealand. It brings lambing, calving, milking, and rapid changes in plant growth rates. The increase in air and soil temperatures and day length, during … Read more

Causes of elevated coumestrol content in lucerne

Rachel Fields presented her PhD exit seminar on Friday 14th July at Lincoln University’s Field Research Centre (FRC). This video is a shortened version of that seminar presenting her main research findings. The topic of Rachel’s PhD was ‘Causes of elevated coumestrol in lucerne and mitigation of the subsequent risk to ewe reproductive performance’Coumestrol is … Read more

Cool sub clovers and the low winter temperatures

Prepared by: Carmen Teixeira (PhD candidate) and edited by the Dryland Pastures Research Team (Prof. Derrick Moot, Mr Dick Lucas, Dr Sonya Olykan and Dr Annamaria Mills) Winter has arrived and this time is associated with Matariki (the Māori New Year), and also marks the shift of the sun’s journey in the sky (see the … Read more

Soil moisture status in winter

In these three short videos, taken on 3 August 2016,  Derrick talks about the current soil moisture status of a shallow and a deep soil as we prepare for the spring growth season in our dryland systems. In the first clip we see a lucerne stand on a deep Templeton silt loam soil at Lincoln … Read more