Warm-season Grasses Stretch Growing Season

Mar 29, 2019

Cattle producers wanting to stretch the grazing season might want to add native warm-season grasses to their operations, says Jim Humphrey, University of Missouri Extension livestock specialist.

Both warm- and cool-season native grasses offer producers access to forage for grazing during extreme temperatures and precipitation. Native warm-season grasses usually begin growing a few weeks later in the spring. They grow better during hot and dry summer months. Their deep roots help them tolerate drought better than cool-season grasses. They usually are better adapted to Missouri soils, climate and pests, Humphrey says.

Warm-season grasses native to Missouri include eastern gama grass, big bluestem, Indian grass, little bluestem and switch grass.

Most tall fescue, Missouri’s primary forage, is infected with an endophyte that can be toxic to cattle, especially during summer. It can cause poor animal performance, lower reproductive success and even death. “Summer slump” often afflicts cattle grazed on fescue. One way to prevent it is to shift grazing cattle to warm-season grasses in summer.

Humphrey recommends establishing native warm-season grasses in separate pastures, paddocks and hayfields. “Use a combination of native warm-season grasses to allow for more production throughout the growing season,” he says.

Establishment requires planning. Weed control during the establishment years promotes strong stands and persistent growth. With proper management, warm-season grasses improve soil fertility and provide good yields of high-quality forage. Stands of warm-season grass usually establish much more slowly than stands of cool-season grass.

Overgrazing or mowing too close to the ground can reduce yields of native warm-season grasses. Grazing and haying these grasses late in the growing season prevents them from storing good energy reserves in their roots for the following growing season.

Source: missouri.edu

Video: Seeing the Whole Season: How Continuous Crop Modeling Is Changing Breeding

Plant breeding has long been shaped by snapshots. A walk through a plot. A single set of notes. A yield check at the end of the season. But crops do not grow in moments. They change every day.

In this conversation, Gary Nijak of AerialPLOT explains how continuous crop modeling is changing the way breeders see, measure, and select plants by capturing growth, stress, and recovery across the entire season, not just at isolated points in time.

Nijak breaks down why point-in-time observations can miss critical performance signals, how repeated, season-long data collection removes the human bottleneck in breeding, and what becomes possible when every plot is treated as a living data set. He also explores how continuous modeling allows breeding programs to move beyond vague descriptors and toward measurable, repeatable insights that connect directly to on-farm outcomes.

This conversation explores:

• What continuous crop modeling is and how it works

• Why traditional field observations fall short over a full growing season

• How scale and repeated measurement change breeding decisions

• What “digital twins” of plots mean for selection and performance

• Why data, not hardware, is driving the next shift in breeding innovation As data-driven breeding moves from research into real-world programs, this discussion offers a clear look at how seeing the whole season is reshaping value for breeders, seed companies, and farmers, and why this may be only the beginning.