A heavy coat comes in handy on cold and wet days. While plants don’t have the means to buy a coat, many species have the ability to grow their own protection from the weather.
For example, barley has a waxy coat and scientists at Agriculture Canada’s research station in Brandon have found a way to take advantage of the plant’s natural ability.
Mario Therrien, a barley breeder at the station, has developed a barley line with a heavier waxy coat that’s designed for swath grazing.
Read Also
Agriculture ministers agree to AgriStability changes
federal government proposed several months ago to increase the compensation rate from 80 to 90 per cent and double the maximum payment from $3 million to $6 million
Therrien developed the new line, which isn’t registered and is known as FB015, from drought resistant barley found in Africa. Barley varieties in the arid regions of Africa have a thick, waxy coat, which increases the plant’s tolerance to drought.
“It’s an adaptation for wild forms of barley that are found in desert areas…. It looks like somebody shellacked it,” said Therrien, who presented information on FB015 during the annual beef and pasture tour at the Brandon Research Centre in early September.
Swath grazing varieties are designed to provide cattle with a good feed throughout the fall, taking pressure off pastures late in the grazing season.
To determine if FB015 would tolerate the weather of the Canadian Prairies, Therrien conducted degradability tests where the new barley line and ordinary barley sat in the swath for three months during the fall.
“(After) three months of ice and rain and bad stuff, it still hung in there,” he said. “It did indeed keep its quality a much longer time than conventional barley.”
While the new line maintained its feed quality in adverse conditions, Therrien also wanted answers to other important questions: would cattle eat it and would the waxy coating interfere with digestion in the rumen?
Therrien and Hushton Block, a beef production specialist at the Brandon cent re, assumed palatability wouldn’t be an issue because wild animals seemed to like FB015.
“The deer did show a palatability preference for the waxy barley. They would walk through the rows of Metcalfe (barley) to eat the waxy barley,” Block said.
To confirm that cattle would also like it, Block compared FB015 to two forage barleys, AC Ranger and Desperado, and a variety of triticale. He set up a paddock where all four types were available to animals and used consumption to measure preference.
“If they had an option for all four, would they show greater intake or lower intake of any one?” Block said.
After analyzing the data, he concluded the animals liked FB015 as much or more than AC Ranger and Desperado.
“It’s holding its own with two of the top barley varieties for forage purposes.”
Determining if the waxy coating would hinder digestion was a trickier question to answer. Block had a veterinarian perform a procedure known as cannulation, where a hole is cut through an animal’s hide and into the rumen.
Block and technicians at the Brandon centre then reached into the rumen to measure the degradation of the leaves and stems of FB015, which was packed inside nylon bags. The scientists weighed the amount inside the bag before and after a period of digestion, to calculate the rate of forage degradation.
Block concluded cattle digested the waxy barley slightly more slowly than AC Metcalfe. But the size of the difference wasn’t significant.
“So, I think we have a good argument here for getting Mario’s variety registered for the specific purpose of swath grazing.”
Variety registration for cereals occurs in February but there are no guarantees that FB015 will make the grade, Therrien said.
He estimated there are 500,000 acres of swath grazing in Canada and if things go well, waxy barley could garner a fair chunk of that market.
“It (swath grazing) is catching on because it’s a very economical way of extending your grazing season,” he said. “Realistically it (waxy barley) could be used in a quarter of a million acres.”
