The right seeds should be part of any strategy to reduce the impact of drought on golf greens and football pitches

During hot, dry summers valuable grassland loses its lush green colour. The longer the drought, the more brown the grass becomes. Week by week, the grass additionally loses biomass, and dry-matter yields decline. Europe’s increasingly frequent spring and summer droughts are creating more forage gaps that reduce agricultural profits.

A huge global demand and a shortage of grass and clover seeds reduced inventories, while other macro-economic effects also bolstered prices.

The climate is changing, and sports pitches, golf courses and municipal parks have to adapt. Deep-rooting, drought-tolerant turf grasses such as 4turf® (turf tetraploid perennial ryegrass) are able to survive spring and summer droughts. Even better, 4turf® stays green and playable with less need for irrigation during long dry periods when water may have to be rationed.

The right seeds should be part of any strategy to reduce the impact of drought on grass swards for cutting and grazing. 

Faultless service in the face of global disruption has been the DLF theme of the past year. Covid-19, container shortages, rising demand, low stocks from the previous year, and below-average harvests have raised prices for the third year in a row. Our analysis of the market and the factors that will influence price and availability for the coming year are a must-read.

The latest release of MyDLF operates in four languages and helps you find the information you need even faster than before. For customers, MyDLF is the always-on route to up-to-the-minute data on your account and to DLF seed varieties. It helps you do more business in more places at more times of the day.

Love it or hate it, this is the summer of European football. It’s also the summer of 4turf®, a vital component of the mixtures used in most of the stadiums taking part in this year’s competition. You can’t miss 4turf®: it’s the lush green colour about to dominate a TV screen near you

Climate change has brought drought-resistance to the fore. To counter the loss of yields that result from more frequent spring and summer droughts we’ve been working to develop forage products, such as Ryegrass PLUS and Tall fescue PLUS, that will keep herds fed during periods of drought.

Spring drought is a relatively new phenomenon caused by climate change. It’s one of the great challenges that professional turf managers face in a changing world. Luckily our stress-tolerant 4turf® tetraploid perennial ryegrass varieties are ideal turfgrasses for coping with lower rainfall during spring.

Grass plants are wildly varied in their genetic make-up. Their variety even extends to the number of chromosomes in each cell. Most cultivated grasses – including turfgrass species – are polyploid: they have more than two sets of chromosomes.

PLUS grass performance is about to get a whole lot better. The next generation of PLUS grasses comes with improvements in yield, density, forage quality and disease resistance. PERSEUS, for example, recently joined the UK's recommended list with a maximum crown rust-rating of 9 out of 9.

Farms that rely on protein-rich feed can become much more self-sufficient by growing alfalfa. Sowing a field of alfalfa helps cut the input costs, protects against fluctuations in protein prices, raise farm yields, and improve farm finances.

A huge demand in spring and summer reduced stocks throughout the supply chain. And a below-average 2020 harvest reveals plenty of yield variations.

Changing environmental and climatic conditions means changed condition for forage and turf grass management. To meet these changing needs, we have screened grass varieties to see which can grow better under difficult conditions like spring and summer drought, and use nutrients more efficiently to improve the strength and health of the plant. The secret is in the roots of the plants.

Climate change and environmental pressure demand more sustainable agricultural production methods. DLF contribute to a green world through our long-lasting commitment to breed reliable and sustainable agricultural solutions for farmers world-wide.

Growing more high protein forage crops like alfalfa and clovers, offers milk and meat producers a greater control over feed cost and climate impact. Cost control should be a priority for all milk and meat producers given the uncertainty of commodity price volatility. In addition, homegrown protein is also a more sustainable solution that offers a positive environmental and climatic impact.

Increased live weight gain and higher milk yields mean a higher profit. To achieve that you need optimal feed – you need the right grass

Growing a catch crop of grass within a field of maize offers farmers several benefits, such as retaining more nitrogen for the following crop, improving soil structure and reducing erosion.

After three poor years, the 2019 seed crop balances supply and demand for the coming season. But there is variability between species and pressure on the most popular varieties. Our advice is to order now if you want to be sure of securing the best varieties.

Fifteen new forage and turf varieties give farmers and amenity managers even more options for improving their pastures and their pitches during the coming season. New forage varieties enable farmers to improve their forage production even more, while seven new turf varieties – including four new 4turf® options contribute further to make parks and sports fields easier to maintain.

A short and mild winter produced an early spring sales season. Seed stocks, already reduced by busy fall sales, moved fast – so fast that there was almost no pause for anyone in production, logistics or sales to catch their breath.

Is focus from your customers to get higher yields from their herds? If so, our 2018/19 batch of new-season varieties should breathe fresh life into their fields, their herds, their bottom line - as well as yours.

By bringing our seed-technology research teams together in a state-of-the-art new lab, we can do even more world-class research. The lab's precisely controlled conditions give researchers a chance to test seed-technology products for real-world performance.

The latest results from STRI and Grasgids, two of Europe's most respected turf listings are in, and looking good for new DLF varieties. Many of the lists are dominated by DLF varieties, with three new ones jumping straight into the top slots.

DLF Select sets new standards in seed purity and availability. We provide an industry that's hungry for the finest quality with carefully graded seed of the highest purity. And we do our utmost to provide it in the quantities the industry needs, year after year.

DLF Fiber Energy is the new badge on our range of highly digestible forage varieties. These are the varieties that release more energy from every mouthful of grass. Look out for the DLF Fiber Energy symbol in our improved 2019 portfolio.

A new release of MyDLF gives you even more functionality. In the 12 months since we launched MyDLF 1.0 we've listened to helpful feedback from its many users. MyDLF 1.1 is the result.

On June 14, the eyes of the world will be on Moscow's Luzhniki Stadium as Russia and Saudi Arabia stride out for the first match of the year's greatest football tournament.

Cold and wet weather made for a disappointing start to the season in March. The weather shortened the spring sowing season, which made the market busier than normal in April.

Our drive for new varieties with improved characteristics is never-ending. With each new season we release a fresh batch supported by test results and formal adoptions on national lists of recommended varieties. For the seed industry's sales and marketing professionals, this is a time to discover what the future holds for their customers.

Spring is by far the best time of year for sowing grass seed. To make the most of this season of growth you need to get the basics right. You have to set the conditions for successful germination and vigorous growth.

While winter still sends its cold breath across Northern Europe, the countdown for this summer’s world-class football in Russia continues. Among pitch managers and chief groundsmen, expectations for perfect tournament pitches are sky high. The organisers, the players, and billions of football fans across the world expect nothing less than beautifully green and hard-wearing grass; the groundsmen will do their utmost to make it happen.

Around the world, more farmers and groundsmen are sowing DLF seed on their paddocks and pitches. To improve the availability and flow of seed we've recently set up new group companies in Africa, South America, and Europe.

My DLF, our professional customer portal, has already attracted many active users among Europe's digitally minded seed trade. The portal, which is an industry-first for DLF, lets you check your orders, track shipments, and research other useful information about your partnership with DLF.

This versatile, multi-purpose crop helps you raise milk and meat production for the coming season – and for several seasons to come.

In a fast-moving world, everyone wants instant answers. With the DLF Seed Variety App, you can zero in on a seed variety for any set of circumstances. And in just a few seconds.

Spring is the time to repair your grassland in readiness for a season of better and more efficient production. Do it now and you'll reverse the year-by-year decline in time for the peak growing season.

As winter ends, lawns and pitches often look tired and worn.If you've got bare patches in your grass, you're providing spaces for weeds to take hold. The result is an uneven surface with irregular bounces that's much harder for footballers and other sports people to play on.

The DLF Academy is a huge resource of science, data, and grass-growing expertise. And it's yours to call upon whenever you need help selling seed to buyers who want facts, evidence, and hard data. It's also very useful for customers who just want to know more about the options available to them.

Festulolium varieties give you higher yield, faster establishment, better persistency, and improved digestibility.

Find and compare DLF products on your phone - fast and easy!

Seed producers in northern Europe had a mixed season. Early spring was good all round and in Denmark the good growing weather lasted till harvest. Unfortunately the weather broke in Denmark just as the harvest began. An unstable mixture of sunshine and rain made harvesting difficult. In the Netherlands the latter part of the growing season was very dry, resulting in a low filling of seeds.

Fresh from the 2017 crop, these new grass and clover varieties are now ready to order and bring new value to your business.

The DLF Seed Variety App will be available to you soon.

Following the takeover of the alfalfa breeding programme from Florimond Desprez in France, DLF is now launching a number of new varieties. They are marketed internationally as DLF Alfalfa and are supplying the strong variety portfolio of grass and clover from DLF.

My DLF gives instant answers online to questions about shipments, seed quantities, and comparisons with previous seasons. It is vital information to help our wholesale customers work more efficiently in a fast-moving market.

After another mild winter, spring has started early with good March weather across many parts of Europe. As a result, spring also came early to our shipping departments. This March we beat our five-year average for shipping volumes by a large margin.

When Europe's two finest football teams, Real Madrid and Juventus, come together for the Champions League final in Wales on 3 June, they will step out on to the world's finest turf. Nothing less than perfect will do for the Champions League final, a global event attracting TV audiences of around 200 million from across 200 countries. At the end of the game there can be only one winner – and only one turf, tough enough to be crowned champion of Europe.

Growing a catch crop of grass within a field of maize offers farmers several benefits, such as retaining more nitrogen for the following crop, improving soil structure, and reducing erosion. And at the same time, a catch crop has a potential source of compliance with EU greening rules. And if they choose the right grass species, they can do all this with no loss of maize yield.

Farms that rely on protein-rich feed can become much more self-sufficient by growing alfalfa. Sowing a field of alfalfa helps cut the input costs, protects against fluctuations in protein prices, raises farm yields, and improves farm finances.

Alfalfa is already an economically useful crop, but there is plenty more we can do to improve it.

It is not necessary to put up with a patchy and threadbare lawn. A single application of SeedBooster® is enough to nurse a tired lawn back to health. Seedbooster® is seed and fertiliser in one – a powerful shot of growth and energy that encourages the lawn to live its life to the full.

The sooner you get to play on a newly sown or overseeded sports pitch, golf course or park, the better. ProNitro® gives a speedier return on the investment in seed. ProNitro® seeds have all the nutrients they need for rapid germination and the subsequent development of a strong, early root system. The result is a field of turf that establishes faster and more effectively.

Farms with a high demand for protein rich feed can become more self-sufficient by growing alfalfa.

The 4turf® revolution set in motion by DLF continues to provide edge-of-seat excitement and performance in all areas of sport.

Good forage grass does not just have to be rich in proteins and sugars, it should be easily digestible. Combining those three traits – high protein content, high sugar content, and digestibility – has been a focus of research for DLF for many years.

Red clover is an easy species to grow and is very drought tolerant. It thrives in a wide range of soils in temperate climates, and does well all year round. Red clover tolerates low winter temperatures and, thanks to its deep taproot, is tolerant of summer droughts. These attributes make the plant a useful component of clover/grass mixtures in two- or three-year conservation leys.

What can you expect from our future red clover varieties? We asked our plant breeder, Libor Jalûvka, to explain the progress of our red clover development programme that takes place at our breeding station in the Czech Republic.

In a ryegrass world, the good question is, of course, whether a crossing of ryegrass with fescue is able to deliver the quality of forage demanded by the dairy farmer and his high-yielding cows. And at the same time express the better longevity of the fescue partner in the crossing.

We asked our own festulolium expert, Vladimir Cernoch, to talk about the differences, and to explain how his breeding programme is pushing for even better performance.

Seed farmers in northern Europe have had a disappointing season. Although early spring gave Danish crops a good head start, the late-spring drought put too much stress on growing plants in the run-up to harvest. For later crops, unstable weather produced variable yields and harvest-time losses.

Our seed breeders never stand still. With each new season comes a fresh round of improved varieties. The future of our industry and the growth of our shared business depends on their tireless work.

Alfalfa is a popular forage component across the world. With a protein content of 18 to 20%, alfalfa is a superb partner for grass in forage seed mixtures. Since alfalfa needs no extra nitrogen, it makes a farm more self-sufficient, improves farm finances, and contributes to long-term sustainable agriculture.

Our seed scientists are back in Brazil for the second time in two years. In 2014, we helped Brazilian groundsmen prepare their stadiums for the world's biggest festival of football. This year we are helping them get ready for the footballing element of the world's largest celebration of sport and athletics, and it starts with the opening ceremony at Brazil's Olympic stadium, Maracanã, on August 5th.

On June 10th, the eyes of Europe will be on the Stade de France, when France and Romania play the first match in the top football tournament of the year. As the TV cameras roll, the fans roar, and the goals come, one hard-working player will be impossible to miss: the lush green championship turf.

DLF has acquired a majority shareholding in Estero S.A., a Uruguayan seed business with strong research links. The company, which has its headquarters in Montevideo, trades widely throughout Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay. Estero specialises in the production, development, and marketing of forage seeds, hybrid corn, sorghum and sunflower, soybean, winter cereals, and lawns.

Despite another mild winter, spring came late to Europe. But that did not stop grass-seed buyers placing big orders and keeping our shipping department busy throughout March and April.

The easiest way to measure the strength of a seed-producer's R&D team is to see how readily its output is recognised by independent seed-listing authorities. A listing on a national seed register is an official stamp of approval for a new variety – and the vital first step to large-scale production.

The profitability of a dairy herd depends on the quality of its nutrition. For good health and high milk yields, dairy cows need a balanced diet of roughage and concentrates. But it is the quality of the feed – whether fresh or conserved – that determines the quantity and cost of your herd’s fodder needs. First and foremost, your cows need grass that is easily digestible – grass with a high cell-wall content (NDF) and highly digestible cell walls (DNDF) – because digestibility increases forage intake and milk output.

The feed value of a field of clover-grass – a mixture of forage grass and clover – is higher than for a field of pure grass. Clover-grass raises milk yields. Clover also fixes nitrogen, which means that subsequent crops need less fertiliser. In short, clover boosts income when used as fodder, and reduces the cost of crops grown in the following years.

Grass sown as a catch crop beneath maize helps maintain your soil and your nitrogen levels – and it does so with no loss of yield.

Grasses and clovers are the earth’s most widespread species, and the most important feedstuff for livestock. But grass does much more than provide short-term forage leys; throughout the world there are millions of hectares of permanent grassland.

If you are looking for top-performing varieties in France, you have plenty to choose from. Each year the French seed catalogue opens its lists to many new varieties developed by DLF. Here is a selection of what you can find in 2016.

Festulolium is one of the great success stories of modern grass-breeding science. Depending on the variety and the growing conditions, festulolium provides from 5% to 25% more forage, and one to two years' more persistency. Festulolium stands up better against winter frosts, drought, and disease; it produces a higher output, per hectare; and offers a better feed value.

Our ProNitro® seed coating is exceptionally rich in nitrogen. It contains 15% of N – at least seven times as much as ordinary fertiliser seed coatings which typically contain between 1% and 2% N. Applying fertiliser by means of a seed coat is up to four times more effective than ordinary broadcasting of fertiliser. Now, after its first year of use in Europe, amenity and forage-grass growers are telling us that it works for them.

Some teams manage to reach the finals in just about every major sports tournament there is. 4turf® from DLF is one of them. After making it to Brazil in 2014, 4turf® is stepping onto the pitch again for France this summer.

Farmers who expect a good forage yield in the year ahead should start preparing now. If a hard winter has damaged your plants, an early diagnosis is vital. As soon as temperatures rise above 4° to 6°C and grass plants begin to grow, it is time to get down on your hands and knees to give your sward a pre-season check.

With each passing year, the productivity of a grass sward declines. By year 4, your forage grass could be yielding less than 75% of its initial output as invasive species crowd out the high-yielding, nutricious species in your original seed mixture.

With thorough soil preparation and a good sowing technique, you can get many more of your forage seeds to germinate and grow.

Recent research from DLF shows how different grass species and seed varieties germinate and establish when soil temperatures are low. There could be a seed mixture out there to help you defeat that unexpected cold snap.

A poor maize harvest in 2015 has left many dairy farmers short. They may not make enough maize silage for feeding in early summer 2016. To help them through this difficult period, we have developed a special fast-establishing mixture that can be cut within eight weeks of sowing.

This summer, the eyes of Europe will be focused on the speed and agility of the continent's finest footballers and the lush green resilience of its finest turf grasses. If you need a showcase for the best sports grass that Europe can produce, you will find it at France 2016. Look closely because much of the footballing action will take place on turf grown from DLF seed.

Give your seeds a nutritional head start with a coating of ProNitro®, the mixture of slow and fast-release nitrogen. No need for fertiliser the first month because each seed comes with its own packed lunch of nitrogen.

We all want more from our grasses – increased yield, improved quality, better stress tolerance, stronger disease resistance – and all at once. Now the dream of better-at-everything super-grasses could be within sight thanks to genomic selection.

For every farm, there is a ForageMax® grass seed mixture in the DLF portfolio that suits your needs. We report on new mixtures that: (1) increase year-two dry-matter yields by 3,3 tonnes per hectare; (2) boost milk production; and (3) improve farm self-sufficiency.

If you are a sports fan, you will have cheered your team to victory on DLF turf. In the past year, the world's most thrilling action has been played on turf grown from our seed.

Among the 17 new forage and turf varieties we are launching this season we want to highlight especially two varieties – a turf perennial and a turf annual ryegrass. The two varieties both offer sports field managers better performance.

Overall the 2014/15 season was very good. The volume of seed traded was much the same as in the previous year, although some regions saw an increase in forage-grass volumes as dairy farmers prepared for the end of the milk quota in April 2015. In the turf market, there was a further decline in the volume of US seed imported into the EU as turf growers responded to a shortage of US seed and a rise in the value of the US dollar. As a result, we exported more European seed to North America as well as to China.

The development of fertiliser seed coatings is a DLF speciality. In our new ProNitro® seed coating, we have given each seed its own 'packed lunch' of nitrogen.

Our ProNitro® seed coating makes seed establishment more effective and more efficient. It gives you more plants, it uses fewer resources, and it saves you time. ProNitro® is a more sustainable way to plant a sports pitch, a park, or any area of turf.

To boost your milk and meat production – by cow or by hectare – choose grass varieties bearing the DLF Fiber Energy label. DLF Fiber Energy varieties perform better because they're highly digestible. Your cattle derive more energy and protein from consuming a kilogram of a highly digestible variety than they would from a kilogram of a less digestible one.