The Laboratory Method of Determining Digestibility by the 'Invitro' Method

As experiments in the labs at the Welsh Plant Breeding Station, Plas Gogerddan, Aberystwyth, show, hay quality is key in meat production.

As Welsh Black cattle and Shropshire sheep safely graze in the pastures of the Welsh Plant Breeding station at Plas Gogerddan, Penrhyncoch, ground-breaking research into ruminant digestion is undertaken in the elegantly housed laboratories. It transpires that the easier the hay is to digest the more weight is gained and thereby better meat produced.

Plas Gogerddan and its estate, once home to the Pryse family, was acquired by the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, in 1950 to accommodate its pioneering Welsh Plant Breeding Station. The station’s first director (from 1919 to 1942) was R. George Stapledon, an agricultural botanist who became a world-renowned expert on grassland and plant breeding, having involved over 200 farms in Wales in trials to breed better varieties of grasses, clovers, cereals and other crops. The station has expanded and developed over the years and is now known as the Institute of Biological, Environmental and Rural Sciences [IBERS].