Rothamsted-UCD Research Partnership Initiation
Visit to UCD Lyons Farm Long-term Grazing Platform
Researchers Theo Akpensuen, Gonzalo Irisarri and Simón Pérez-Márquez from Rothamsted Research visited the UCD Lyons Farm Long-term Grazing Platform in April and learned about the research carried out on that platform and discussed potential topics of interest for collaborative research projects.
Reciprocal visit to Rothamsted Research North Wyke
Helen Sheridan, Paul Murphy, and Alan Kelly visited Rothamsted Research North Wyke in May. As part of their visit, they delivered a seminar on the research at UCD Lyons Farm Long-term Grazing Platform. Staff from North Wyke, as well as external invitees such as farmers and former employees, attended. They also toured the grazing platforms and facilities at Rothamsted Research North Wyke. Finally, a wrap-up meeting was held to refine the research ideas to be developed collaboratively.
Seminar
Helen Sheridan delivered the talk entitled “Multispecies Swards as a Biological Tool to Enhance Sustainability of Ruminant Production Systems” where she presented their findings regarding the productivity and persistency of the herbal leys.
Alan Kelly delivered the talk entitled “Farm productivity, environmental emission, nutrient recycling data utilized and coefficients derived for farm scale modelling and LCA“. He presented results about animal performance, profitability, emissions and meat quality.
Paul Murphy delivered the talk entitled “UCD Lyons Long-term Grazing Platform: soil, water and greenhouse gas emissions” where he showed how the grazing platform was established and the findings about environmental impacts.
Tour at Rothamsted Research North Wyke
UCD researchers toured the North Wyke Farm Platform, the TechnoGrazing experiment, the AgZero+ Rowden plots, the Orr Small Ruminant Facility, the recently launched Controlled Environment rooms, and the analytical labs.
Wrap-up meeting
Finally, the core group of researchers and plus technicians and researchers from Rothamsted had a final discussion to refine the research ideas to develop into proposals. These topics covered:
- The use of remote sensing to inform changes in resilience across European grasslands.
- Long-term response of grasslands to extreme events.
- Characterisation of grasslands functioning (the use of Ecosystem functional types conceptual model).
- The use of RothC to understand SOC dynamics under different sward compositions.
- Methane emissions under grazing conditions.
- Species diversity to improve the provision of ecosystem services.
- Calibration of NIR equations to predict the nutritional quality of herbal leys.
- Hosting UCD students in Rothamsted Research North Wyke
