Traditional ryegrass may soon be superseded by a more environmentally friendly version - if it's allowed into the country. Picture / File
The steady progress AgResearch was making on field trials of environment-friendly GM ryegrass in the US served as a "hurry-up" for NZ to get on with a mature national conversation about genetic modification, according to Federated Farmers.
"We're all agreed climate change and our international commitments on greenhouse gas reductions
present big challenges to our economy and way of life, but we're currently sidelining a potential major tool that could help farmers tackle ruminant methane and excreted nitrogen," president Katie Milne said.
"It's bordering on ridiculous that our current laws on GM have forced AgResearch to go to the United States to simulate the sort of growing conditions found in New Zealand as they trial the properties of genetically-modified high metabolisable energy (HME) ryegrass."
AgResearch had reported that its experiments in the US were about showing whether the new potentially environmentally-sustainable grass, which struck a balance between reductions in methane emissions from the animals that ate it, greater tolerance to drought, and farm productivity, would perform in the field in a similar way to how it performed in controlled studies.
Initial results, it said, were encouraging.
