Sown pasture R&D priorities

Summary

About 53% (9-12 million ha) of the realistic potential for sown pastures, in terms of area sown, has been achieved for northern Australia. It is likely that 70% or so of this area is grass-only pasture, with buffel grass being the major species. A number of tropical legume species have been successful with leucaena and several of the Stylosanthes genus being the most widespread. However, the investment in evaluating new species has diminished greatly over the last 10-15 years for a number of reasons and this has seriously reduced research capacity in sown pasture agronomy. There is a case to be made for maintaining some capacity for plant evaluation work but it would be difficult to cost-effectively restore and sustain this capacity. Rather, it is recommended that future research should focus on sown pasture management systems with most, if not all, effort targeted at improving the productivity of the huge areas of grass-only pastures in central and southern Queensland.