Luisetti Seeds 2018 Paddock of the Year

Luisetti Seeds would like to congratulate Jan Lepoutre, his parents and brother Gurt on winning the Luisetti Seeds paddock of the year with an excellent crop of tetraploid perennial ryegrass. Jan and his family farm approximately 1000 hectares between Dorie and Rakaia.

The ryegrass was a tetraploid forage perennial which Luisetti Seeds multiply for a Japanese company. The paddock
was planted in May, following a crop of onions. The grass established well in the autumn, but had little growth through the winter. The paddock showed vigorous growth in the spring providing some very useful grazing.

The paddock was closed on the 10th October. An application of nitrogen was then applied. Moddus was split, with the first application on 10th November followed by a further treatment ten days later. The crop received an application of epoxiconazole with the Moddus followed by two subsequent fungicide applications over the flowering period. The grass remained disease free through to cutting in mid-January.

The crop delivered a healthy 3.4 tonnes per hectare to the store and after dressing losses of around 20% ended up with a machine dressed yield of just shy of 2.7 tonnes per hectare.

The Japanese specifications are exceptionally high, and thanks to the collaborative effort from the Lepoutre team and the staff at Luisetti Seeds, the final product was very high quality, with the main line testing at 100% purity and 99% germination.