Clover varieties with built in insurance against drought deserve full consideration by farmers looking to drought proof pastures this season, New South Wales Agriculture pasture research scientist, Dr Brian Dear, said today.

“There are positive steps farmers can take to improve the persistence of their pastures in below average rainfall years, including selecting drought-hardy clover varieties,” Dr Dear said.

“The National Annual Pasture Legume Improvement Program has been progressively breeding increased levels of hard seed which are less vulnerable to dry years as they carry a large amount of seed from one year to the next.

“This means varieties like Goulburn and Riverina are less affected by low seed set in dry years.”

Dr Dear said hard seeded varieties are also less affected by summer rain which prematurely germinates large quantities of soft seed, depleting reserves available for the real autumn break.

“Work at Wagga Wagga Agricultural Institute, funded by GRDC and AWI, has resulted in two new hard seed clover varieties, Urana and Coolamon, which will be released over the next two years,” he said.

Dr Dear said some simple, positive steps farmers can take to when sowing new pastures to improve establishment and improve the pasture’s ability to come back following dry years include:

·     Use a mix of subclover varieties including earlier maturing varieties which can set seed in dry years;

·     Make sure selected varieties have high levels of hard seed as insurance against years when seed set is poor;

·     If cover-cropping, reduce the cereal sowing rate even further and only use less leafy cereals such as barley or wheat. Double the row spacing to reduce competition.

Drought tolerant subclover varieties with higher levels of hard seed include early maturing varieties Dalkeith and Urana, midseason maturing varieties Seaton Park, York, Junee, Coolamon and later maturing varieties Goulburn, Riverina and Gosse.