B.CCH.6621 - Advancing the agronomy package for tedera to fill feed gaps

Summary

An agronomy package for the newly domesticated forage legume has been developed to cover all aspects of adaptation, establishment and management: soil type, time of sowing, herbicide tolerance, fertiliser requirement, sowing depth, sowing density, row spacing, defoliation management, harvesting and hard-seed breakdown pattern.

This information package is essential for producers to successfully integrate tedera in their farming operations by sowing in the right place, at the right time, in the right way to establish it successfully and then optimise management to strategically fill feed gaps and maximise animal production over the whole farm.

Objectives

Eight specific objectives were addressed by this project, and all were successfully achieved:

• To evaluate regional adaptation in different soils in WA, SA, and VIC with a focus on low and medium rainfall Mediterranean environments.
• To research establishment techniques (time of sowing, sowing depth, seed density and spatial configuration).
• To identify fertilisation requirements (P and K).
• To identify herbicide tolerance.
• To understand population dynamics in a sward (original sown plants and recruits).
• To manage defoliation to maximize green leaf production in the out-of-season period.
• To understand the pattern of hard-seed softening in the field.
• To undertake summer and autumn grazing trials to validate livestock performance from previous trials.

Key findings

This final report presents:

• The experimental results from 2017 to 2022 for the critical components of the agronomy package for tedera.
• The results of a grazing experiment at Kojonup, being the last of a series of animal production experiments conducted between 2013 to 2016 in project B.PBE.0027 “Sheep production from tedera”.

Benefits to industry

Trials demonstrated that tedera grazing could maintain or increase animal live weight and condition, while reducing or eliminating expensive hand-feeding for around three months between December and May, using either continuous or rotational grazing. This project developed the agronomy package to be able to sow tedera in the right soil, at the right time, following the right guidelines to maximize establishment success and maximize its biomass production of the best quality to be used at strategic times, complementing other feedbase options available to producers.

MLA action

MLA will use the findings of this research report to inform future investment.

Future research

Regional adaptation and herbicide tolerance are two key areas for future research for the new cultivar once seed becomes commercially available. Demonstration site networks should be established to provide producers and agronomists with confidence in the agronomy package of tedera and to demonstrate and measure the animal production/economic benefits of including tedera in the production system.