GENETICALLY modified (GM) ryegrass pastures could be the key to unlocking a 50 per cent increase in per hectare profit. University of Melbourne professor Kevin Smith spoke at the WAFarmers annual dairy conference last week about GM pasture research and the opportunity it presents for dairy farmers in Australia, as well as the potential issues in managing GM pastures.
He said in the early days of plant breeding, pasture varieties were often overlooked.
"When I started my career 25 years ago, pasture breeding wasn't keeping up. We weren't keeping up with cattle, sheep or crop breeding," Dr Smith said.
"We realised if we didn't get involved in pastures we'd end up in the backwater where we wouldn't have forage genetics and that dairy farmers would forever be forced to use grain to increase energy into cows."
He said breeding in the era of biotechnology did not only mean genetic modification, but also molecular marking and DNA fingerprinting.
"GM is not an alternative to plant breeding, it is part of modern plant breeding to get those major gains we see in other crops worldwide."
He said the big developments in crops, such as corn, came from corn breeders discovering how to develop hybrids to make massive increases in yields.
"As a pasture breeder I could only dream of this, however ryegrass and most pasture grasses have a neat genetic system. - they have a neat foolproof way the pollen they shed themselves will not fertilise themselves."
"But by sequencing and cloning the genes involved we can now manipulate and break that self incompatibility down in ryegrass and manage it in a way that we can now utilise the natural genetic variation in ryegrass to our advantage to create hybrids," he said.
The outcome of the research is a new high quality and high quality hybrid GM pasture variety named Event 10, which Dr Smith said was a "world first". The variety uses the ryegrass genes to trick the plant into keeping photosynthesizing for longer and moving where it stores the energy from the base of the plant to the leaves.
"Event 10's yield is better than or equal to the best commercial cultivars available today. Normally it is a trade off between getting a high yield or a high quality plant - Event 10 has both."
Dr Smith said Even 10 was also "remarkably robust" extensive testing in greenhouse and in paddock had shown, unlike other hybrids which can decline in quality or yields through the generations.
As part of the broader research, Dr Smith oversaw a research program which modelled farm data over a 20 year period that showed the value of a one megajoule increase in energy increased farm profit by $450/ha in a Victorian dryland dairy operation which equates to about a 50 per cent increase in per hectare profit.
"Even if you take this with a grain of salt and halve this number and then halve it again, it's still 12.5pc to your bottom line."
Dr Smith said while there was much debate on how to manage the coexistence of GM and non-GM crops worldwide, there were a number of strategies that dairy farmers could use to ensure seed movement was minimised.
"The most gene flow in plants happens less than 50m from where the pollen comes from and there are range of options to minimise the small risk of seed spread
"Therefore, sowing larger paddocks, using chemicals or machinery to avoid flowering and seed set and a boundary crop to stop pollination across neighbour can reduce seed movement.
"But remember - we already have a farming system that seeks to minimize flowering and reproduction
However, WA dairy processors remained cautious of the introduction of GM pastures.
Lion Dairy and Drinks managing director Peter West said current customer sentiment towards GM was a concern and the processor "will also ways go at the pace of the consumer".
"The science of GM and what consumer thinks might be poles apart but we are a market that responds to consumers," he said.
WA Farmers incoming dairy president Michael Partridge said processors needed to recognise the potential value of GM pastures to dairy farmers.
"This technology gives us potential to keep cows on grass for longer at a better cost and is something we need to advocate.
"If the processors say no, it sends a message to consumer to also say no - we need to help educate consumers."
