Agronomy excels at the Grassland Society of Southern Africa congress

The SU Agronomy department was well represented at the 57th Annual Congress of the Grassland Society of Southern Africa (GSSA). The congress, held both online and physically at Aldam Holiday Resort and Conference Centre, near Ventersburg in the Free State, was well attended by almost 200 delegates (c. 150 in-person attendance) from across the globe. The congress was a successful week with an exceptional quality of contributions, and the department managed to walk away with four of the six awards for their research.

Guy Musto, an MSc student, presented a review about “Adaptive multi-paddock grazing of cover crops: a promising tool for ecosystem service provision in integrated crop-livestock systems” in a special session with a panel discussion on “Unlocking Regenerative Grazing”. The potential of cover crop mixtures as an alternative to single-specie pastures is currently under scrutiny in the small-grain crop rotation systems. Not only do they serve to incorporate greater diversity in the system, but through subjecting them to regenerative, high-density grazing by sheep, they show promise for further leveraging natural ecological processes to sustain crop production, while supporting an additional farm enterprise. This session generated a lot of interest and a lively discussion.

Lisa Matthew, an MSc student, was awarded the best poster presentation for her poster titled “Carbon sequestration and greenhouse gas emissions in crop systems containing a pasture-livestock phase vs cash crop only rotation systems”. The poster compares soil emissions of nitrous oxide and methane, and soil carbon sequestration as a starting point to investigate the environmental effect of incorporating livestock.

Charné Viljoen, junior lecturer and PhD candidate, received the Norman Rethman Award for the best presentation in Planted Pastures for her impactful talk “More benefits in kikuyu-ryegrass pastures from using lower nitrogen fertiliser rates”. Charné has also been inaugurated as the new President of the GSSA and will strategically lead the committee over the next year.

Guy, Lisa and Charne collaborates with scientists at the Western Cape Department of Agriculture. We wish to thank Dr Johann Strauss and his team for the valuable contributions.

Portia Phohlo, PhD student in Agronomy and Sustainable Agriculture researcher at Trace and Save, was awarded for the best presentation at the congress. Her exceptional talk was titled “Excessive nitrogen fertilization is a limitation to herbage yield and nitrogen use efficiency of dairy pastures in South Africa”.

Department of Agronomy is proud of these accomplishments and congratulate all for excellent contributions. The awards demonstrate the value of the work to the agronomy industry. We look forward to seeing the information being impactful to producers.