Making every seed count - Creating multifunctional regional seed mixtures for permanent grassland – A strategy for maintaining genetic diversity in commercially produced seed

Farmers (and wider society) need more resilient species mixtures for their productive permanent grassland in order to reduce dependencies on regular ploughing and re-seeding and mineral fertiliser and herbicide inputs. Multi-species leys, which consist of several species of improved grasses, legumes and forage herbs, have demonstrated the improved resilience to drought while still providing an economical level of production, without the use of carbon-intensive synthetic nitrogen fertiliser. The number of species used in these mixtures, however, is limited to those that perform well under sown conditions and have seed that is economically produced. Many other species with potential benefits remain a challenge to produce commercial quantities of seed from and to establish readily into new or existing grassland.

An exploration of scientific evidence and literature on grasslands including data from the GB Countryside Survey, will identify the species (and the properties of those species) that grow successfully within multi-species grassland mixes across GB. This evidence will be used as a basis for selecting species which can be used to pilot approaches for seed provision for the grasslands of the future.

There are three approaches to supplying native seeds for grassland creation and restoration projects. They can be collected from natural or wild populations, produced from managed natural populations or produced under cultivated seed production systems. These three methods have different advantages and limitations, particularly with regards to the ability to capture the genetic diversity of a species in a population.

This project will investigate innovative methods of seed production for selected native plants which have beneficial properties for livestock, biodiversity, soil or wider ecosystem services. The aim is to use innovative plant propagation techniques to multiply up seed stock which will be collected from diverse natural habitats. The project will test approaches for seed collection in line with best practice guidelines of the European Native Seed Producers Association (ENSPA). It will also test innovative plant propagation techniques which allow for the perpetual maintenance of plants established from the original collection in order to prolong the capacity to produce 1st generation seed stock, thus maintaining the maximum genetic diversity of the original collection. Finally it will test a variety of seed germination techniques (stratification, scarification, post-harvest maturation and treatment with germination-stimulating hormones) in order to maximise the representation of the collected population while reducing any conscious or unconscious selection pressures.