Endophyte options
Using Endophytes in your permanent pasture mixes improves animal health providing better animal performance, more palatable pasture, and easier pasture management.
What is Endophyte?
Endophyte is a fungus (called Neotyphodium lolii) that greatly affects animal health and performance. Endophyte is found only in ryegrass and tall fescue. It lives completely within the plant and is only visible under a microscope. Endophyte occurs naturally, and is found in many old pastures.
Why have Endophyte?
There are many different types of Endophyte currently available and each varies in persistance, yield, and insect protection. Endophyte protects plants from a range of insects. In dry summer situations ryegrass containing endophyte consistently out-yields and persists better than ryegrass Without endophyte.
Ryegrass endophytes:
Without Endophyte (WE)
Without Endophyte gives good animal performance, but reduced insect resistance. Only suitable for summer wet South Island areas.
Low Endophyte (LE)
Low Endophyte grasses provides better animal performance than High Endophyte ones but the downside of this is that it won’t persist as well.
High / Standard Endophyte (HE/SE)
High/ Standard Endophyte is still available in some older varieties. It is not recommended because it causes ryegrass staggers, depresses liveweight gains in lambs and reduces milk production in dairy cows. This type of endophyte although persists extremely well in tough conditions.
AR1 Endophyte
Ryegrass with AR1 endophyte is a non-staggering endophyte that has excellent animal performance. However, the Peramine does not give good resistance against Black Beetle, and care is needed in areas with high Black Beetle numbers, such as the northern half of the North Island. AR1 endophyte has now been extensively field-tested for animal safety and productivity, and is now available commercially in a number of ryegrass cultivars.
AR1 endophyte in ryegrass offers the following benefits:
- Better liveweight gains and milk production than wild-type endophyte ryegrass
- No ryegrass staggers
- No heat stress
- Less dags and flystrike
- No prolactin depression
- Excellent control of Argentine stem weevil
- Pasture productivity similar to that of wild-type endophyte ryegrass
- Better pasture persistence than endophyte-free ryegrass
AR37 Endophyte:
Ryegrass with AR37 gives you simple, economical insect control and around the clock protection from most pasture pests. AR37’s continual and superior insect protection ensures maximum pasture production and better pasture persistence allowing higher animal productivity. AR37 endophyte in ryegrass offers the following benefits:
- Greater insect protection than any commercially available ryegrass endophyte
- Continual protection against Argentine Stem Weevil, Adult Black Beetle, Pasture Mealy Bug, Root Aphid and Porina
- Improves tiller density and persistence of perennial ryegrass
- Maximises animal performance
- Higher pasture productivity allowing higher animal productivity and more profit
NEA2 Endophyte
NEA2 endophyte is ideally suited to intensive farming systems through all regions of NZ, providing persistent, staggers free pasture with excellent animal performance. Ryegrass with NEA2 gives good control of black beetle, to the same level as AR37. It also provides a level of control of Argentine stem weevil (ASW), pasture mealy bug (provisional rating) and root aphid, higher in the diploid cultivar Trojan than in Bealey.
NEA4
NEA4 endophyte shows excellent animal performance (the same as AR1). NEA4 endophyte has been tested against other endophytes in 10 separate replicated animal trial runs, from 2012 to 2019. These are ‘worst case scenario’ conditions, specifically designed to reveal any endophyte issues. The trials are exactly what you should not do if you want good animal performance! We grow pure ryegrass pastures to 4+ t DM/ha so they have plenty of stem and summer seedhead. Then lambs are weighed and allocated across the plots, where they are set stocked for up to 8 weeks. For the first 4 weeks, they eat higher ME parts of the pasture (leaf) but as time passes they graze into stem, which is higher in any endophyte alkaloids.
NEA
This endophyte is only available in Shogun. It gives good black beetle control. Overall, insect resistance is similar to Bealey with NEA2.
Tall Fescue endophytes:
Max P Endophyte
Max P is a novel endophyte for the use in modern tall fescue cultivars. Max P greatly increases tall fescues persistence and production by protecting it from insects. In Canterbury trials yield increases of 25 -39 % have been recorded when comparing Max P with non-endophyte tall fescues. For more information on Max P Tall Fescues please contact Specialty Seeds.
Protek Endophyte
Protek endophyte is a novel tall fescue endophyte that does not produce any animal toxins, and has been tested by independent scientists to confirm it has no effect on animals. Protek produces lolines, which have a strong effect on many insect species. The lolines are present in both plant material above ground and in roots.
Insects that Protek works against include, Grass grub, Black beetle, Porina, Argentine stem weevil, Root aphid and Pasture mealy bug.
Downloads: If you require more information on Endophytes please download the Specialty Seeds Endophyte Options PDF.