Harden Murrumburrah Landcare Group AGM and Guest Speaker

Venue:  Harden Country Club, East Street, HARDEN.

Speakers:
Janelle Jenkins, Mixed Farming Officer, Riverina Local Land Services – will present the results from the “Trouble with Sub” project.

Jim Laycock, Technical Agronomist, Incitec Pivot Fertilsers – will discuss the role of macro- and micronutrients in pastures and fertility levels required to meet production targets.

Background:
Pasture legumes, particularly sub clover, have very important roles to play in both grazing and cropping enterprises in southern NSW. The ability of legumes to fix nitrogen is a benefit to both accompanying species in mixed pastures and as a supply of soil nitrogen to crops subsequently grown. 
 
HMLG together with Riverina LLS undertook a project in 2015 to determine if there are measurable growth and nodulation issues with pasture legumes in medium/high rainfall areas of the Riverina.
 
Over 80 paddocks containing clover have been surveyed. The preliminary results are indicating that many of the paddocks surveyed (from those sown in the 1950’s to 2014) have very poor nodule formation on their root systems. Other information that has been collected includes soil tests, pasture composition, degree of nodule formation and amount of nitrogen fixed by the clover from the sampled paddocks.

Some Results to Date:
The majority of the clover plants sampled from the 80 paddocks were ineffectively nodulated, potentially having a large impact on pasture production.  Very few of the farmers sampled had been using molybdenum (an important micronutrient for the nitrogen fixing) in fertilsers or sprays.  Approximately half the paddocks had pH less than 5 in CaCl (acid soils have long been implicated in poor clover nodulation).