Expression of Interest: Broadcasting medic seeds to improve pasture performance

PODS – Pasture Optimisation for Drought Solutions, Expression of Interest: Broadcasting medic seeds to improve pasture performance.

As part of our project to promote best-practice feedbase management and increased drought resilience in low to medium rainfall regions, we are interested in evaluating if broadcasting medic seeds ahead of the break is a method that can lift medic production. To achieve this, we are interested in a medic paddock (or part of one) that you expect to perform poorly.

If you have a paddock and you are interested in trying broadcasting, we will supply you with a bag of Jester-SU (bred to be tolerant of SU herbicide residues) barrel medic for you to broadcast ahead of the break. Jester-SU has a prominent leaf mark (figure 1) which allows us to determine what medic is background medic and what is Jester-SU. This cannot be done if existing medic pastures have the leaf blotch. Cultivars with the leaf blotch are Herald, Jaguar, Angel, Jester and Jemalong. Our project will supply the bag of Jester-SU and will require access to the paddock during the growing season to assess how much Jester-SU established.

Figure 1: Prominent leaf blotch which is present on Jester-SU (and older cultivars Herald, Jaguar, Jester, Jemalong).

If you are interested, please contact:

David Peck, Senior Research Officer, SARDI
P: 8429 0475 | M: 0407 528 104 | E: david.peck@sa.gov.au

Tshewang Dorji, Research Officer, University of Adelaide
M: 0449224611 E: tshewang.dorji@adelaide.edu.au