Pastures

Pastures play a major role in agricultural enterprises and contribute over $3 billion annually in Western Australia through animal production, improvements to crop rotations and conserved fodder. In a typical year pastures occupy up to half the land in low to medium rainfall areas and over two thirds of the land in high rainfall areas. Improved pastures are increasingly being used to play a more comprehensive role in farming systems to address emerging challenges for environment protection and food production.

The Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development is a world leader in pasture breeding and selection, grazing systems design and agronomic management of pastures. The department provides information, tools and resources to support the success of the agriculture sector in improving the productivity and profitability of pasture systems under both dryland and irrigated conditions. 

Articles

  • Rouse is a mid to late flowering variety of the waterlogging-tolerant “white-seeded” yanninicum subspecies of sub clover.

  • Yanco is a midseason flowering variety of the waterlogging-tolerant “white-seeded” yanninicum subspecies of sub clover.

  • Six new subterranean clover varieties have been developed from a national five-year joint venture between the Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development (DPIRD) and pasture seed comp

  • Rosabrook is a late flowering, disease resistant subterranean clover with increased resistance to redlegged earth mites (RLEM) and high early season biomass production.

  • Narrikup is a very vigorous midseason flowering variety of the “black-seeded” subterraneum subspecies of sub clover.

  • Forbes has been developed for use in cropping rotations in areas with 350-525 mm annual average rainfall.

  • Tammin is a more persistent early flowering variety for cropping rotations in low-medium rainfall (300-450 mm annual average rainfall) areas with the novel traits of seedling resistance to redlegge

  • The establishment of sub-tropical grasses has improved dramatically in the past few years.

  • Signal grass is a warm season (C4) sub-tropical grass but it is not recommended for sowing either alone or as a component of species mixtures in Western Australia due to a high risk of causing seco

  • There is considerable interest in growing sub-tropical perennial grasses especially on the south coast and in the northern agricultural region.