Dryland Pasture Legume Systems Project

00:22 - The Trigonella’s coming up well isn t it? Beautifully yeah, yeah.

00:25 - The project’s demonstrating how new and improved legumes can boost profit and overcome barriers, including cost.

00:33 - The takeaway is going be we’re going to provide you the data to make you confident to adopt these pasture legumes and with the knowledge they’re going to benefit your farming system.

00:43 - They’re going to lower the risk, they’re going to increase your productivity, they’re going to allow you to make decisions that you’re going to be calmer about, because it’s all proven.

00:52 - Here in the western region, there are nine field trials and five large scale demonstrations.

00:57 - All are designed to help growers understand the benefits of pasture legumes in mixed systems and different soil types, with new species removing old barriers to pasture legume uptake.

01:11 - Decreasing risk, increasing profit, increasing resilience and better tolerance of climate change and changed rainfall patterns.

01:20 - The project led by GRDC, is an $18M cross-industry collaboration with Meat and Livestock Australia and Australian Wool innovation, giving farmers renewed confidence in legumes, on many levels.

01:34 - Professor Howieson says that summer sowing gives hard-seed time to breakdown slowly, with the deep-rooted and climate-adapted legumes ready to germinate on first rains.

01:46 - That’s significant because these legumes when they get up and going on the earliest rains, they produce more biomass, more animal feed, more N for your crops, more competition for your weeds, a greater overall outcome and they’ve managed to do it at a time when they’re not competing with their cropping program.

02:05 - The Northam trial site features some exciting new species that are showing good capacity for reducing root lesion nematodes, and production of seed above ground meaning growers can use a conventional header to harvest their own seed reducing on-farm costs.

02:22 - Two geneses that we’re sort of honing-in on at the moment are Trigonella and Scorpiurus.

02:27 - These pasture legumes we’ve been looking at are suited to soils of alkaline and fine textured soils, compared to coarse acid soils where we’ve been kicking goals for some time now, with Serradellas and Biserullas so we’re moving away from that and going onto new species on a different soil type to complement that mMedic background.

02:50 - Look at that we have great N fixation potential here that’s a lovely fan shaped nodule so those nodules are expanding in response to the demand of the plant for more N so they put on more mass, and the Nitrogen factory gets cranked up.

03:10 - Basically it comes down to your end inputs that you ve created a Nitrogen bank for those subsequent crops and then you can make your decisions as the season unfolds, as no one can predict the weather so if you have the fallback of N in the system that s a benefit to a lot of farmers in these drier areas.

03:31 - One of the critical aspects of the research is how animals perform on the new pasture species. These sheep are part of the project s animal science component, helping to determine pasture legume benefits to wool and meat with the aim of optimising production and profitability for farmers.

03:50 - The pasture legumes tend to have a higher feeding value for sheep and cattle which just means the animals can grow faster, they also have a higher crude protein content particularly when they’re drying off in summer so much better for helping you finish those late lambs.

04:04 - Determining pasture legumes nutritional value is a major focus here with the prospect of extending the period of quality feed and reducing supplementary feeding.

04:14 - Hayley says that s just one of many advantages pasture legumes offer farmers.

04:20 - Well the data from our experiments and the modelling is saying that farmers can earn $100 more per winter grazed hectare by adopting these species but that will only happen if they’re maximining their stocking rates, so we need to work on ways to help farmers fill the feed gaps and get their stocking rates up to take advantage of these species.

04:38 - The team encourages growers to attend Field days and access online information for the latest details on the research, which is now in its third year in the Western region.

04:49 - Professor Howieson says growers can already be confident that pasture legumes can boost profit and reduce risks, especially with increasing climate challenges.

04:59 - Oh it’s incredibly exciting and the farmers we speak to are incredibly excited about it because it’s a huge innovation in farming systems for southern Australia it’s a once in 100-year innovation it’s a new ideology and opportunity and comes when we need it with a changing climate and variable rainfall patterns, this makes us resilient in the face of those challenges.

05:23 - This project is supported by funding from the Australia Government Department of Agriculture, Water and Environment as part of its Rural R&D for profit program. .