Adoption of better agronomic practices for improving establishment of pasture legumes in the sub-tropics

Abstract

Pasture legumes have been identified as the best long-term option to increase the productivity and returns from grass pastures in Queensland, however successful adoption rates remain low in the Brigalow Belt bioregion. Poor establishment is the most common reason for legumes failing. As part of a series of legume management workshops, 267 graziers and farm advisors were surveyed about their plans for sowing legumes and what agronomic practices they intended to use. Two-thirds of participants intended to change the practices they use to establish legumes through changing fallowing or seed-bed preparation, rhizobia application, sowing method or other practices. Despite the on-going drought the surveyed participants intend to establish 105,000 additional hectares of legumes using improved agronomic practices in the next 5 years. Adoption of better agronomic practices is likely to lead to more reliable legume establishment thereby increasing productivity for an important cattle production region of northern Australia.