Sika
Chicory
- Rapid establishment and high annual production
- Versatile option suitable as an annual crop or true perennial
- Exceptional persistence under grazing
- NZ bred with strong disease tolerance
- Strong seasoned activity and outstanding second year production
- Semi-erect for better crop utilisation by grazing animals
- Thick deep taproot offering drought tolerance
Sika is a New Zealand bred chicory, that has been bred to fit into a variety of farm systems, such as a short-term summer fed crop, a multi-year specialist crop with or without clover and as a component of pasture mixes. Sika is a true perennial chicory with its parentage selected from plants collected out of long-term grazing trials at Ruakura, Hamilton. A core focus in the development programme was improve adaptability and performance over its predecessor Puna II chicory. Characterised by rapid establishment, strong seasonal production and improved disease tolerance and persistence Sika can be used as an annual crop, or as part of a perennial, multi-year sward.
Chicory is well recognised for its high nutritional feed quality, and users of Sika can expect increased yield and disease tolerance relative to Puna II and other commercially available cultivars.
Dry Matter Yield
Trialling at Palmerston North and Canterbury continued for a second year and Sika maintained its dry matter performance. Sika has proven to be ideally suited to farm systems requiring two years of production such as incorporating into specialist mixes with Quartz white clover and Amigain red clover or added at 1 to 2kg/ha into permanent pasture mix.
DRY MATTER PERFORMANCE – ON A ONE YEAR SYSTEM
Sika chicory was tested at three key sites – Canterbury, Hamilton and Palmerston North. It was tested for its performance as an annual chicory to replicate usage from a spring sowing and feed over the summer/ autumn months (table 1). Sika consistently performed well against Puna II across all three sites. The results from these trials demonstrate that Sika has annual performance ideally suited to supplementing milking cows or growing out or finishing young stock.
PLANT PERSISTENCE
The dry matter performance across two years at the Lincoln and Palmerston North trial sites was attributed to plant number survival across years
for Sika chicory. This demonstrates that Sika has achieved one of its key selection criteria of having plant survival beyond the first of sowing.
