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Plantain (Plantago lanceolata) is known to contain bioactive compounds including verbascoside (acteoside), aucubin and catalpol. Limited New Zealand data are available to quantify the concentrations of secondary plant compounds in cultivars of plantain. This experiment compared secondary plant compound concentrations for five cultivars or breeding lines of plantain and the botanical distribution of these compounds over a year. For all cultivars verbascoside concentration was greatest, aucubin intermediate and catalpol lowest. The concentration of catalpol and verbascoside in leaf tended to be greater for the cultivars ‘Hercules’ and ‘Endurance’ compared with ‘Elite 2’, ‘PG742’ and ‘Tonic’. However, ‘Hercules’ and ‘Endurance’ tended to have lower concentrations of catalpol and verbascoside in scape (reproductive material from base to seedhead). The difference among cultivars in aucubin concentration was small. This experiment suggests that leaf concentration of catalpol and verbascoside is genotype specific.

Chicory and plantain have been suggested as alternative grazed forages to perennial ryegrass for New Zealand dairy systems. While diurnal changes in plant chemical composition have been described for ryegrass there is currently little information for herbs. This experiment aimed to compare the effect of nitrogen inputs (low and high) and harvesting time (am versus pm) on the chemical composition of four forages (ryegrass, plantain, chicory and white clover). The effect of harvest time was greater than N fertiliser inputs on chemical composition for all forages. Ryegrass showed the greatest increase in water soluble carbohydrate diurnally, at the expense of neutral detergent fibre and to a lesser extent crude protein. This suggests afternoon allocation of ryegrass may be beneficial to improve the nutritive value of pasture on offer; allocation timing is less important for white clover, chicory and plantain. Keywords: chicory, clover, crude protein, plantain, ryegrass, water soluble carbohydrate

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