A new salt-tolerant pasture legume, Neptune messina, could be a godsend in the South East of SA and southern WA, transforming bare waterlogging prone areas into productive pastures.
The self-generating annual legume developed by the Department of Agriculture and Food WA and SARDI can handle waterlogging and alkaline soils.
It came to the fore from more than 40 pasture legumes collected from Mediterranean environments across the world in a Future Farm Industries CRC project.
The key to its success is the special salt tolerant rhizobium needed to coat the seed.
In the first year of commercial release, it has coped with one of the wettest winters in a decade and has not only survived but produced a bulk of dry matter and seed.
PIRSA Rural Solutions SA soils consultant Mel Fraser sees it as a “good fit” in a pasture blend including clovers, chicory, medics or ryegrass, surviving in water up to 20 centimetres deep.
“It still grows well in good soil types as a nitrogen fixing legume but in areas of the paddock where there are constraints and some other species don’t persist it is a valuable feed source," she said.
“We have seen it this year survive in (5cm to 7.5cm) of stagnant water and it sat there for a long time in cold conditions. It has a waxy coating that develops on the stem which can transfer oxygen to the roots to allow it to breathe underwater.”
Dr Fraser said producers were often reluctant to invest money renovating their poorer quality paddocks, but it was important these areas were not neglected.
“The poorer soils across the plains can be saline, sodic and alkaline, so maintaining good plant cover on the surface is vital to prevent soil structurally declining. It appears that messina can do that.”
In May, the Reedy Creek Mid SE Irrigators, Mackillop Farm Management Group and Naracoorte Seeds, with assistance from PIRSA and Natural Resources SE, established three demonstration sites at Reedy Creek, Keilira and Millicent.
Dr Fraser says the dry matter production has been promising.
The most consistent performing pasture mix across the three sites was Blend 3 (3 kilograms a hectare of messina, 3kg/ha SARDI Persian clover, 3kg/ha Cavalier medic, 10kg/ha of Atom Prairie grass and 1kg/ha of Palestine strawberry clover), which delivered 8-9 tonnes/ha of dry matter.
The sites were not grazed to maximise seed set but earlier studies by SARDI found no animal health issues or tainting of milk and meat.
It was also found to have excellent nutritive value, with 82 per cent digestibility, 28pc crude protein and metabolisable energy of 13 megajoules/kg DM.
Salt tolerant legume restores production
REEDY Creek prime lamb producers Wayne and Josh Hancock are excited about the potential of Neptune messina, which survived five months of waterlogging.
They hosted a demonstration site on their Muttaburra property, with four different pasture blends sown in strips across a 36-hectare paddock.
The blends, including three kilograms/ha to 5kg/ha of messina, were sown with 100kg/ha of MAP fertiliser.
The Hancocks first heard about the legume through Naracoorte Seeds’ Dylan Brodie and view it as a productive alternative to tall wheat grass in their low-lying saline areas with a pH of 8-8.5.
“The paddock was only good for running about 270 Merino ewes for a few months of the year and we would have to take them out because of a lack of feed quality and an issue with beard grass,” Wayne said.
“The ryegrass and clover is more prominent in the good patches by the road but as you get closer to the tea tree and swampy ground it is the messina that is thicker.”
The Hancocks are looking forward to grazing it next season and see another three paddocks that could benefit from a messina pasture mix.
