The making of a new pasture variety

FARMERS who attend field days at Department of Agriculture research stations are reasonably familiar with the procedure for producing a new cereal variety. It involves a painstaking and tedious process of crossing, followed by many years of segregation, selection and testing for yield, disease resistance, and other characters. Although there are many pitfalls, the procedure for the creation of a new cereal variety is at least fairly well systematised. Until recently the making of a new pasture variety was far from a systematic undertaking