New annual and short-lived perennial pasture legumes for Australian agriculture-15 years of revolution
By P. Nichols, A. Loi, B. Nutt, P. Evans, A. D. Craig, B. Pengelly, B. Dear, D. Lloyd, C. Revell, R. Nair and 16 more. 2007
232 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Fifteen years ago subterranean clover (Trifolium subterraneum) and annual medics (Medicago spp.) dominated annual pasture legume sowings in southern Australia, while limited pasture legume options existed for cropping areas of subtropical Australia. Since then a number of sustainability and economic challenges to existing farming systems have emerged, exposing shortcomings in these species and the lack of legume biodiversity. Public breeding institutions have responded to these challenges by developing 58 new annual and short-lived perennial pasture legumes with adaptation to both existing and new farming systems. This has involved commercialisation of new species and overcoming deficiencies in traditional species. Traits incorporated in legumes of Mediterranean Basin origin for the Mediterranean, temperate and southern subtropical climates of Australia include deeper root systems, protection from false breaks (germination-inducing rainfall events followed by death from drought), a range of hardseed levels, acid-soil tolerant root nodule symbioses, tolerance to pests and diseases and provision of lower cost seed through ease of seed harvesting and processing. Ten new species, French serradella (Ornithopus sativus), biserrula (Biserrula pelecinus), sulla (Hedysarum coronarium), gland (Trifolium glanduliferum), arrowleaf (Trifolium vesiculosum), eastern star (Trifolium dasyurum) and crimson (Trifolium incarnatum) clovers and sphere (Medicago sphaerocarpos), button (Medicago orbicularis) and hybrid disc (Medicago tornata × Medicago littoralis) medics have been commercialised. Improved cultivars have also been developed of subterranean (T. subterraneum), balansa (Trifolium michelianum), rose (Trifolium hirtum), Persian (Trifolium resupinatum) and purple (Trifolium purpureum) clovers, burr (Medicago polymorpha), strand (M. littoralis), snail (Medicago scutellata) and barrel (Medicago truncatula) medics and yellow serradella (Ornithopus compressus). New tropical legumes for pasture phases in subtropical cropping areas include butterfly pea (Clitoria ternatea), burgundy bean (Macroptilium bracteatum) and perennial lablab (Lablab purpureus). Other species and cultivars of Mediterranean species are likely to be released soon. The contributions of genetic resources, rhizobiology, pasture ecology and agronomy, plant pathology, entomology, plant chemistry and animal science have been paramount to this success. A farmer survey in Western Australia has shown widespread adoption of the new pasture legumes, while adoption of new tropical legumes has also been high in cropping areas of the subtropics. This trend is likely to increase due to the increasing cost of inorganic nitrogen, the need to combat herbicide-resistant crop weeds and improved livestock prices. Mixtures of these legumes allows for more robust pastures buffered against variable seasons, soils, pests, diseases and management decisions. This paper discusses development of the new pasture legumes, their potential use and deficiencies in the current suite.
Subfields: Agronomy and Crop Science, Forestry, Plant Science
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f49f2d8ec457fa320b777a6f281dd679ff8f10bc
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Citations in the corpus
- Genetic improvement of subterranean clover (Trifolium subterraneum L.). 1. Germplasm, traits and future prospects (2013, methodology): “Cultivar Rosedale was collected in 1974 by C. M. Francis, W. J. Collins, and J. S. Katznelson (Francis et al. 1975), while cv. Izmir was collected by C. M. Francis in 1987 (Nichols et al. 2007c).”
- Factors affecting the potential contributions of N2 fixation by legumes in Australian pasture systems (2012, background): “…attributes such as aerial seeding that make for easier harvesting by farmers; and/or (iii) that demonstrate levels of hard-seed (i.e. dormancy traits) that could be better suited for short rotations with cropping (e.g. Zhang et al. 2004; Loi et al. 2005; Nichols et al. 2007;Rogers et al. 2011).”
- Temperate pasture legumes in Australia—their history, current use, and future prospects (2012, methodology): “2005), was discovered in the Esperance region ofWA in the early 1990s (Barbetti 1995) and newer cultivars have been developed with resistance to both races (You et al. 2005; Nichols et al. 2007).”