Sukari, Back with a Bang!

SUKARI, a diploid Italian ryegrass is a high sugar, high-yielding pasture grass with excellent heat tolerance and a late flowering date with the advantage of a good winter yield and a long duration to fill the summer/early autumn gap.

SUKARI is a cultivar that was bred locally at Cedara by the ARC and was developed with the combined goals of high yield, heat tolerance and strong persistence into the summer months. Table 1 shows the excellent results from an autumn planting, with a good winter production and great late summer production on the SUKARI, in the 2015-2016 season. These results are in line with previous seasons results with SUKARI proving to be a top performer.

SUKARI is an excellent option for spring planting as it has superior heat tolerance and will produce well into the summer. When conditions cool in the autumn it will flush again and continue to produce deep into the following summer, giving high yields of excellent quality forage over an 18-month period. The farmers who have managed to get their hands on some of the available stock, can attest to this performance. We have observed in field, that spring planting is the sweet spot for this cultivar getting most ‘bang for your buck’ however autumn plantings have also shown that SUKARI produces well over the winter months and gives “extra legs” into the summer.

PANNAR SEED is the exclusive distributor of SUKARI. However, due to challenges surrounding the local seed production on this very late flowering cultivar, only limited volumes of seed have been available for sale over the last couple of seasons. Due to the problems encountered with the local production of seed, a decision was taken to outsource productions to New Zealand. This has proved to be highly successful with good yields of high quality seed being harvested during December 2017. This seed has now been imported and is ready for sale for the 2018 spring planting window.