The new variety of drought-tolerant forage legume, Tedara, from Spain's Canary Islands, will be commercially available in Western Australia this year but not yet in the eastern states, with suitable seed retained only for sandy soil trial purposes.
"At this point we are only going to supply seed to conduct trials and demonstrations," said Seednet's south-east territory manager Robert Christie.
"We have had a couple of trials in the Victorian Wimmera in 2017 and 2018 at Stawell and Joel Joel, but with dry seasons and frosts we have not been able to gain much information on the agronomy for Tedera for this side of the country."
Trials were planned for Womboota, near Deniliquin, and at Forbes in 2018 but were too dry to sow. However, a successful demonstration was established at Wudinna on the Eyre peninsula last year.
"Knowing the difficulties we have encountered, we are loath to sell large quantities of seed to growers and then have failures and disappointments," said Mr Christie.
Tedara, with a pale-blue clover-like flower, can significantly reduce supplementary feeding of sheep in summer and autumn and boost on-farm productivity.
The drought-tolerant perennial legume is the first cultivar of tedera (Bituminaria bituminosa var albomarginata) to be bred for Australian conditions.
Trial sites planned for 2019 will take place on acid, sandy soils and will, if possible, be grown next to lucerne, cocksfoot or phalaris, or adjacent to clover, medic or serradella for comparison.
The traditional forage native to the Canaries is recommended for grazing to fill the summer-autumn feed gap and offers 17 per cent crude protein, 73 per cent digestible dry matter and 11.8 metabolisable energy.
