Professor Frank O'Mara:

We work very closely with UCD, not just on education but also on the research side. It is the one university that has a research farm. As I mentioned earlier, the number of Walsh scholars we have in collaboration with UCD is the biggest of any of the universities here by far. We work very closely. Multispecies swards is just one area in the whole area of forage production where each of us is very familiar with what we are doing. Very good work has been going on in UCD in that area for many years. I believe Professor Boland was the first to kick that off in UCD. In our centres, including Moorepark, the Grange animal and grassland research centre and Johnstown Castle, we have multispecies swards. The one unique thing that Teagasc can bring to that research, which perhaps is not duplication, is the Curtins farm system. That experimental unit is actually a mini farm where we are able to run long-term farm studies on self-contained farmlets. Teagasc has been doing that type of farm system research for many years. We are able to look at multispecies swards in that context and consider where they fit into an overall system for profitability, sustainability and the longevity of the species in it. It is complementary rather than duplicating the work that goes on in UCD. We all know each other very well and share information and findings on a very regular basis.