b'reports of poor animal performance, and in some instances, animal death, began to surface. Through extensive research, tall fescue was found to have a fungus inside the plant that grows between the plant cells, the fungus was named endophyte. According to Roberts, K31 can create a host of problems for grazing animals, including low daily gains, poor conception and offspring survival rates, and restricted blood flow to the extremi-ties, causing a condition known as fescue foot. K31 endophyte infected fescue costs United States live-stock producers over $1 billion a year, Roberts says. Thats why its such a controversial plant. Toxicosis caused by endophyte infected tall fescue is the greatest management cost those graz-ing livestock in the Fescue Belt have. Losses caused by toxicosis are all too familiar to Burgaw, North Carolina, cattle producer Buron Lanier. The majority of the pastures that we started out with when we got into cattle were K31, says Lanier. We noticed that our cows never thrived on those pastures like we thought they would. We had trouble with conception and growth, and some of the cows started to lose their tail switches. Once we started investigating we found out that we had toxicosis problems.The knowledge Lanier gained from his research led him to convert all 400 of the acres the operation utilizes for year-round cattle grazing to novel endophyte infected tall fescue varieties. Mike Trammel serves as senior plant breeder for the Noble A Novel Improvement Research Institute.To combat fescue toxicosis, the industry first removed the endo-phyte all together. When it was first discovered that problems were caused by the endophyte in the plant, the first thought was that we should just remove it, says Carolyn Young, a scientist Noble Research Institute, who researches endophytes and other microorganisms and their contribution to plant production. It was very quickly seen that the endophyte provided many things to the plant that were also beneficial, as we see better persistence, drought toler-ance and greater seed production in the endophyte-infected plants.Today, a major breakthrough in forage and cropping sys-tems has been the introduction of novel endophyte infected tall fescue varieties, providing both the benefit of the endophyte while omitting the ergot alkaloid biosynthesis that is toxic to the animals that graze the plant. Novel endophyte infected fescue was first introduced in 2000 with seed companies patenting specific endophytes to create unique tall fescue varieties. Novel endophytes are proprietary products, says Roeland Kapsenberg, vice president, Agriculture Division, for DLF Pickseed. Our first variety with a novel endophyte was obtained through a licensing agreement from the University of Arkansas. Separately, we started our own collection and selection to identify beneficial endophytes, he says. Through this process we have identified an endophytethat is compatibleto a broad range of tall fescue germplasm. That has allowed us to developseveral tall fescue varieties with the same novel endophyte. Kapsenberg says that while beneficial endophytes may be easily identified, that is only a fraction of the challenge in crea- Carolyn Young is a professor at the Noble Research Institute.ting a novel endophyte fescue variety for the marketplace. If the 70/ SEEDWORLD.COMOCTOBER 2019'