Clover and other legumes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What sort of clover are you after?

We stock:

• White Clovers – The best legume for perennial pastures where moisture and medium to high fertility prevail. Winter hardy and frost tolerant. Easy to establish, produces a network of stolons and a dense cover of leaves.
• Red Clovers – Short lived, tap roted, drought tolerant legume that provides high quality feed. Not as winter active as white clover. May live for 1-3 years in pasture swards. Some cultivars contain phyto-oestrogens that can affect animal fertility.
• Annual Clovers – Annual legume, most suited to areas with acid soils and or dry summer conditions. Very prostrate plant that generally has better winter growth than white clover and will persist through self polination and reseeding. Commonly used in oversow situations as it is easy to establish.
• Other Clover Types – Annual and perennial legumes.

White clovers

(Sowing Rates: Alone: Mix: 3-4 kgs per ha)

In White clover, leaf size generally means more potential yield. However a high stolon density means that there’s better tolerance of adverse conditions, such as drought, pests or pugging. It’s important to select the right clover for the situation based on these attributes.

Small / Small-Medium Leafed White Clover:

AberLasting:  – Small Leaf Caucasian White Clover X The first variety from the Institute of Biological, Environmental and Rural Sciences (IBERS) White Clover Breeding Program to incorporate traits from White Clover and Caucasian Clover, a closely related and highly drought-tolerant species. AberLasting was developed by conventional crossing techniques and has all the characteristics of a small leaf white clover and with the drought tolerance of Caucasian clover. Other beneficial traits include stolons and rhizomes from the Caucasian Clover. It is suitable for use in permanent pasture where water may be limited and in all grazing systems.

Demand white clover: Dense stoloniferous and persistence clover type with good winter hardiness and improved winter, spring production.

Nomad white clover: Selected for increased stolon recovery after summer dry periods, a must for all dryland pasture seed mixes.

Apex white clover: Breed for sheep, beef and Deer grazing systems with a high stolon density with excellent disease resistance including leaf rust, pepper spot and clover rot. Apex has shown good drought tolerance

Emblem:- Is a medium to small-leaved white clover that is a third generation of this style. It has been bred and selected from a program focused on broadly adaptive genotypes successful in variable environmental conditions and grazing managements. Emblem has specifically been successful in low input and set stock conditions predominantly found in sheep and beef farming systems.

Hilltop: Grasslands Hilltop was bred to cope with more challenging environments, from variable soil fertility to variable moisture availability, it is a very robust and persistent small-medium leaf white clover. When compared to Tahora II, Hilltop has a higher stolon density that has led to increased persistence. A breeding focus for Hilltop was to promote competitiveness against invasive grasses such as Browntop to help it survive in the reverted pastures often found in New Zealand.

Huia white clover: Standard cultivator that has been successfully used over a wide range of farm and soil fertility situations for many years.

 

Medium / Medium-Large Leafed White Clover:

AberDance; – is best suited to sheep or dairy grazing. It is very winter hardy and therefore very suitable to many parts of New Zealand. AberDance could be used where the ability to be flexible is key, and can be used in either medium or long-term pasture.

Attribute:-Is a new medium to large-leaved white clover which is the next generation of genetic improvement in this most widely used white clover category in New Zealand. To be selected from our extensive white clover breeding program to replace its predecessor Tribute, Attribute has had to show a high level of performance in dryland sheep pastures under both set stocking and rotational grazing in Canterbury, while being just as successful in the intensive grass growing areas of the rotationally grazed cattle pastures in the upper North Island

Brace: Brace is a new large-leaved white clover which will be an exciting addition to New Zealand’s farming industry. The history of DSIR/AgResearch Grasslands white clover breeding programmes have added high value to all farming across New Zealand and the world; they have crossed and evaluated white clover germplasm from around the world for decades. Over the last 2-3 decades they have experienced the increased activity in the dairy industry and the intensity of production, the emergence of clover root weevil and the continued impact of climate variation on unirrigated dairy areas. It was from this backdrop that white clover parents, with broad genetic background including ecotypes, were combined to produce the new variety Brace.

Quartz: Grasslands Quartz is a persistent, medium leaf white clover with broad adaptability across environments and farm systems. Quartz performs well under dairy, sheep and beef grazing management. When compared to Bounty white clover, Quartz offers higher dry matter yields and increased stolon density for even greater persistence. Quartz has been trialled throughout New Zealand and performed well.

Quest white clover: Quest is a multi-purpose clover that has strong spring and summer growth combined with very good cool season production. It has a high tolerance to clover root weevil and its high stolon density ensures good persistence.

Ruru: Is an upgraded replacement for Weka. Similar in type, with more aggressive growth and higher year-round yield, particularly in summer.

Weka: – Medium – large leaf type, suited to all grazing systems with a high stolon density.

Large Leafed White Clover:

AberNormous: – AberNormous is a new generation large leaf white clover with similar to slightly larger leaf size than ARAN white clover, with higher stolon density. Suitable for rotational dairy/cattle grazing and high production silage pastures.

Kotuku: Kotuku is a very fast establishing, nutritious, high yielding large leaved white clover with superior summer growth.

Legacy: – High yielding large leaf type selected for improved stolon density.

Mantra: A new and very large leafed mid flowering white clover, with semi-erect growth habit, high stolon number and thick stolons, with medium to high growing point to enable better competition with grass in swards, high yields with strong winter, early spring growth, very good persistence and reasonably good tolerance to schlerotinia.

Ruru:- Bred for high grazing tolerance, strong spreading growth and good tolerance of clover root weevil, Ruru is a stayer, not a sprinter. Plenty of clover in summer makes animals happy and productive. Ruru flourishes in warm weather, guaranteeing more energy and protein when grass is not always at its best.

Tobby:- Among its other great traits, RGT Tobby offers excellent frost tolerance, minimizing the adverse effects on white clover’s survival and production, particularly during late autumn or early spring frosts. Including a white clover like RGT Tobby can be fundamental for optimizing farm performance. In addition to its inherent high productivity, incorporating RGT Tobby can boost both the quantity and quality of grazing pastures. White clover can fix up to 30 kg N/ha for every 1000 kg dry matter/ha grown.

Red Clovers

Sowing Rates: Diploid: Mixed: 3-5 kgs per ha: Tetraploid: Mixed: 4-6 kgs per ha)

Aberclaret: – The development of more grazing tolerant and persistent varieties is creating the potential for red clover in rotational grazing systems, and it also has value as a break crop that improves soil structure and fertility.

Amigain – Amigain is the latest generation red clover bred in New Zealand for increased persistence and performance in permanent pastures, high performance short-term pastures, silage mixes and pure sward red clover stands.

Hamua: – Traditional cultivar often known as Cowgrass or broad red. Early flowering type becoming out classed.

Morrow: – Morrow comes from a tough family. Most red clovers wouldn’t last long under intensive rotational dairy grazing on light, upper North Island soils. But Morrow’s parents did. Over time, they adapted, survived, and produced well, even after repeated droughts.

Pinot: – Excellent cool season production dense tillering. Early to mid-flowering type with finer stems and upright growth habit making it ideal for hay / silage making
Relish: – High yield potential, semi prostrate growth habit and low levels of oestrogen.

Relish:- Is a primary option for a red clover forage crop with proven persistence and production. Relish has shown to be highly productive with enough early spring growth for it to be used as a lambing forage (as early as September).

Reaper: – A new, high yielding New Zealand bred, large leafed, semi-erect growing diploid red clover which is suitable for grazing and for hay and silage. Reaper is a very palatable variety, with fine stems which are less stalky than traditional red clovers and is low in oestrogen levels. It has good disease resistance and strong persistence.

Rossi red clover: Rossi red clover is a new release from Seed Force. Rossi has been bred for persistence and disease tolerance and has strong performance during the warmer seasons.

Sensation red clover: Upright growth habit selected for good resistance under hard grazing. Early flowering for better late winter / spring production also has re – seeding ability.

Other Clover Types:

Arrowleaf Clover:

High-quality spring and summer feed in low rainfall areas

An annual clover that produces significant, high-quality, feed in late spring and summer trial experiments have shown yields more than 9000kg DM/ha.

Autumn sown 3kg / ha in a mix or 8kg / ha as a single species. A good companion for plantain and perennial legumes such as red and white clover boosting production in the first year. Bloat safe and highly palatable.

 

Balansa Clover:

Hollow stemmed type with a semi prostrate growth habit. Sub Balansa clovers need to re – seed to persist. Perform better where total annual rainfall is above 600 mm. Balansa clovers are tolerant of a wide range of soil types (except sand) and soil fertility.

 

Crimson Clover:

Exceptional biomass and plant companion species and is a nitrogen fixing plant. with help of pink. Crimson clover is a deep rooting clover that penetrate the soil, also useful on very difficult sites.  Magnificent flowers attract many beneficial insects such as bees, lady bugs.

 

Lotus Pedunculatus:

Also performs well where other clovers fail and is often used in hill country forestry situations noted for their tough environments. Is better suited to free draining soils.

Persian Clover:

Native to countries that include Turkey, Iran and Iraq Persian’s performance in summer dry areas should need no explanation. Can be used as either a special purpose forage crop or used in pasture seed mixes with Italian ryegrasses, cereals or brassicas as a self-regenerating and highly nutritive plant. Over recent years there has been a great deal of interest in Persian clovers.

 

Strawberry clover:

A perennial legume that persists by both re – seeding and stolon growth. Selected to survive in very difficult environments. Ideal for waterlogged and / or saline conditions were other clovers will not persist.

Sub Clover:

Sub Clover are annual clovers breed to perform well in summer conditions. Being an annual clover it must be allowed to re – seed to persist into the second and subsequent seasons. Sub clovers usually contain a percentage of “Hard Seed” that is also important for persistence. As most are imported sub clover supply can be subject to supply difficulties.

 

Bindoon was bred to replace traditional sub clover varieties and is recognized for its cool season productivity due to its high seed production and dense seedling regeneration. Bindoon sub clover displays a very prostrate growth habit and produces a low, dense sward. Although relatively soft-seeded, it sets sufficient seed to ensure the reliable regeneration of plant populations.

Coolamon is a mid-heading cultivar like Woogenellup and 1-2 weeks earlier than Goulburn, setting viable seed mid to late October. Good winter activity with excellent early spring growth with the ability to grow well into mid-November with rainfall. Coolamon has excellent density and is highly suited to early spring set-stocking in dry environments.

Puawhaa is a prostrate-growing subterranean clover characterized by its hairy petioles, trifoliate leaves, and runners, with a late flowering habit (144 days). This legume has a prostrate crown and runner morphology, which helps it avoid the risk of overgrazing and contributes to its seed production abilities.

Woogenellup: – demonstrates mid-season maturity and is well suited to medium to high rainfall zones. It demonstrates excellent winter and spring production along with low hard seed levels which makes it suitable for short-term cropping rotations.