Agronomosts solutions to buffel grass rundown

摘要

Buffel grass pastures across Queensland are in trouble -but it's been going on for decades. Since its introduction to Australia as a sown pasture species in the 1950s and '60s the 10 or so cultivars of buffel grass have been the backbone species in sown improved pastures on around 5.8 million hectares, and are commonly found on an additional 28m ha, in Qld.Buffel pastures can support higher stocking rates and achieve 1.5 times the liveweight gains of native pastures in central Qld and so have been seen as a boon to the beef industry. Research by agronomists in the 1980s and 90s established that the observed decline in productivity of sown pastures was 'real' and the cause was determined to be simply the age of the pasture and the associated tie-up of nutrients in high O.N plant material. The annual liveweight gain per hectare on rundown buffel grass pastures (usually aged over 20 years) is generally 50% less than that of newly established pasture and similar to a native pasture oversown with a legume (see Table 1).