Legume establishment: why pasture legumes benefit beef businesses in the monsoonal tropics and how to get them into grass pastures

Beef grazing on native pastures is the key land use in the seasonally dry zone of north Queensland but animal productivity is limited by poor feed supply during the extended dry season.  The adoption of legumes into grass pastures has historically been shown to increase returns through improving the diet over the year, but adoption has remained low.

Recent research by the Queensland Government and Meat & Livestock Australia has focussed on the development of legume/grass ‘production paddocks’ on a range of land-types to target the nutrition of key livestock classes (e.g. weaners and steers).  These systems are highly productive and profitable, but successful adoption by graziers depends on reliable and affordable establishment.

In this BeefConnect webinar recording, listen to Dr Kendrick Cox (DPI Principal Pasture Scientist), as he discusses the case for investing in legume pastures and describes a range of methods and considerations to reliably establish legumes into native and sown grass pastures under a range of situations within north Queensland.

You can watch the full recording or use the playlist below to jump to the start of a particular section within the presentation. (48:21; published 5 December 2024 by FutureBeefAu).

Download a copy of the presentation – Legume Establishment – pasture legumes in the monsoonal tropics (PDF; 4.9 MB)

Additional resources:

• Queensland Pasture Resilience Program (FutureBeef)
• Sign up to the Queensland Pastures newsletter (FutureBeef)
• Stylos in Queensland (FutureBeef)
• Victoria River District Legume Establishment Demonstration (FutureBeef)
• Legumes Hub (MLA)

Full recording

Playlist

1. Legume establishment: pasture legumes in the monsoonal tropics
2. Legume establishment: the northern zone
3. Questions for consideration?
4. The northern (monsoonal) zone
5. Rainfall drives pasture growth
6. Extended feed ‘gap’
7. Rainfall variability: drought and flood
8. Land condition decline – northern gulf
9. Low soil P limits animals and pasture growth
10. Pro-active management for an extremely variable climate
11. Legumes for seasonally dry tropics
12. Where do the legumes come from? (the Australian Pastures Genebank)
13. Legumes = high quality dry season feed…mostly
14. Stylos improve feed quality and animal intake
15. Stylos provide more pasture for rain (1990s PDS)
16. Stylo production paddocks lift weaner production
17. Intensive production systems
18. Leucaena vs fertilised stylo production paddocks
19. 50 years of research in the wet tropics
20. How do I develop legume pastures in the monsoonal zone?
21. Steps to productive legume pastures
22. It’s all natural selection…
23. Seeds – life’s little achiever…
24. Is my seed alive?
25. Seed dies quickly – don’t let it dies on your watch!
26. When to plant?
27. Seeds – rule of thumb
28. Oversowing into native grasslands: large paddocks
29. Production paddocks: full renovation & drilling
30. Production paddocks: leucaena
31. Production paddocks: legume strips into grass
32. Other methods: cattle as seed planters?
33. Soil nutrients for legume pastures – wet coast
34. Fertiliser for grass-legume pastures
35. Bugs for free nitrogen
36. Short planting window – need to be organised
37. Management after establishment
38. Legume BMP planting timeline
39. Conclusions
40. More information
41. The northern pastures team