New Forage Legume Could Ease Nitrogen Cost Shock – Radio Script
VO: Rio Verde lablab, a new summer forage legume recently developed by the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station, could offer cattle producers some relief to nitrogen fertilizer cost shock. This is Robert Burns, with Texas Cooperative Extension. Today, I'm talking to Dr. Ray Smith, forage breeder with the Experiment Station. Dr. Smith, I understand this new forage that you've developed is suitable for many purposes.
SOT: (Dr. Ray Smith, Texas Agricultural Experiment Station) That’s right Robert, lablab is a new, somewhat new forage legume for us. It’s been used in the U.S. and across the Southern Region and in Texas for a number of years. We now have a new variety that was developed here at Overton. This variety is a Rio Verde. This variety was developed really as both a browse for white-tailed deer and as a forage for cattle.
VO: In your formal report, you noted that until Rio Verde, all lablab seed was imported, mostly from Australia.
SOT: (Smith) That’s correct. In the past the variety Rongai has been imported and has been sold, and it does a good job for us, but we wanted to have a plant that would give us a Texas seed crop and allow us both to have seed crop in Texas and a new forage cultivar.
VO: Why is it possible to produce Rio Verde seed in Texas and not Rongai? (RON JI)
SOT: (Smith) That’s a good question. The cultivar Rongai is late maturing and doesn’t really flower here in Northeast or even Central Texas until really late, and then it gets killed by our frost in November. We’ve developed this new variety that will flower in late August and early September. It'll produce seed by October, which then gives us this possibility for seed crops here.
VO: How can Rio Verde lower input costs in regard to nitrogen fertilizer?
SOT: (Smith) This will be one of not very many crops that we can plant as a summer annual forage for cattle and not apply any commercial nitrogen fertilizer. This plant is very productive. It will produce almost a ton of dry matter in thirty to forty days. This forage is very high quality; it’s at least twenty-five percent protein. We are still doing the research on methods to produce hay, but we know it can be grazed – cattle graze it readily. They really seem to like it.
VO: I understand you did actual grazing trials in cooperation with your Experiment Station colleague, Dr. Monte Rouquette?
SOT: (Smith) That’s correct. Dr. Rouquette and I have worked on this for a number of years. One of the things that we have found in that research is that cattle seem to prefer the lablab if you compare it to some of the other warm-season legumes like cowpea. If we grow cowpea and lablab together in a trial, and turn in cattle, they will graze the lablab very quickly and refuse the cow pea for a long time.
VO: It's a bit late to be talking about summer forage this year, but what about using if for wild life plots now?
SOT: (Smith) If you wanted to use lablab immediately, one of the things you could do is plant it this fall. We’d like to see things planted by around Labor Day or shortly there after. If you plant lablab then, you could probably mix it with something like oats, and then be grazing that in about thirty days.. Of course, the lablab would get killed when we have a frost in November, but then you would have oats.
VO: And the price of seed is ...?
SOT: (Smith) Right now the retail cost is about $4.50 a pound, and we’d like to see about twenty-five pounds per acre planted.
VO: And does Rio Verde tolerate acid soils?
SOT: (Smith) It does; we’ve grown here in soils down to about pH 5.5 with good results.
VO: And for next year, would you walk us through using Rio Verde for livestock operations?
SOT: (Smith) The planting for cattle or for any other livestock, like goats, you’d probably plant this in late April or early May. Then you would have several choices, you would have enough growth to start grazing in thirty to forty days and have enough growth for hay in about sixty days according to rainfall.
VO: Thank you, Dr. Smith. Reporting for the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station, this has been Robert Burns, with Texas A&M's Agricultural Communications unit.
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