Persistence and Botanical Composition of Jesup Tall Fescue with Varying Endophyte Status after Five Years of Stockpiling and Intensive Winter Grazing

Abstract

Long‐term stand persistence data on tall fescue varieties infected with novel endophyte strains is still limited. We examined the changes in persistence of Jesup tall fescue without (E‐) or with either a wild (E+) or novel endophyte (EN) after intensive winter grazing for five consecutive years using a transect method. Also, three methods of assessing botanical composition of the stands (a transect method, a step point method, and a dry weight rank method) were evaluated. Five years after the initial scoring, E+ (73.0%) had a greater proportion of tall fescue in the stand than E‐ (59.0%), but the relative abundance of tall fescue in 2006 compared to that of 2002 was, in average, 50% greater, and did not differ among treatments. All three methods ranked the relative abundance of tall fescue similarly. According to the transect method, EN did not differ from E+ and only tended to be different from E‐. Alternatively, the other two methods established clear differences among treatments. Our data are in agreement with previous data from novel‐endophyte research that indicate that tall fescue infected with the AR542 strain exhibits improved persistence compared to that of E‐ tall fescue, but unlike others we observed that EN showed inferior persistence compared to E+. Long‐term persistence data under broader utilization strategies is still needed to verify such attributes.