New Saltland Grazing Options in Major Trials at Wubin

GROUNDBREAKING research underway near Wubin has the potential to turn around about half of WA’s unproductive saline and waterlogged farming land, greatly boosting output and sustainability for woolgrowers across the wheatbelt .

The project is being conducted on Keith, Rosemary and Boyd Carter’s property east of Wubin.

It aims to better understand how saltbush and other salt-tolerant pastures reduce water tables and how to best target species to grow on specific degrees of saline lands.

“We will then have a chance at improving the growth of understorey, annual pastures and potentially even crops on a range of salt-affected and marginal land at risk from future salinity,” said Dr Ed Barrett-Lennard, Department of Agriculture’s Principal Research Scientist and project coordinator..

“This should boost farm productivity and profitability from grazing and grain production in the medium to long-term..

Keith Carter said salinity had been increasingly encroaching on his property during the past 30 years as it had been on many farms in the wheatbelt.

But a freak 750 milimetres of rain recorded over 14 months in 1999-2000 had greatly escalated the problem. This was the wettest period ever experienced on the farm, which has an average annual rainfall of 285 mm.

“It bought the salt to surface and left it there, making salinity and waterlogging anon-going problem for us,” Mr Carter said.

The Carter family’s total arable farming area is 5800haand they do not want to lose any more of this valuable resource. “Our aim is to bring that affected 400ha back into high production for sheep and crops,” Mr Carter noted.

Dr Barrett-Lennard has set up two saltbush and salt-tolerant pasture trials over four hectares on the Carterfamily’s property.

It has involved planting five metre wide rows of river saltbush, small leaf bluebush, samphire, Rhodes grass, salt-water couch and lucerne at five-metre intervals on ared loam claypan running down into a severely waterlogged are.

Next year an understorey of annual pastures will be sown in the inter-rows and the trial will continue for three years. This trial has been repeated at three other WA sites.

At the end of the three years, Dr Barrett-Lennard said researchers should know each species’ precise degree of salt and water logging tolerance and be able to advise farmers which species to grow under a wide range of saline conditions as part of their wider salinity management strategies.

Mr Carter said he hoped the SGSL trial on his family’s property would lead to the development of profitable saltbush and pasture alley systems, where crops could be grown in inter-rows on areas of his farm affected by salinity and waterlogging. “Such a system would also be ideal for summer sheep grazing, with the saltbush providing excellent protein,” he said.

The second trial focuses on determining how saltbush is best planted to maximise watertable drawdown. This will have big implications for farmers in the wheatbelt, as almost all struggle with varying degrees of salinity and waterlogging across their farms.

Saltbush also had potential to fill the summer and late autumn sheep feed gap, allowing him to boost stocking rates.

First published November 2003. For more information go to the Sustainable Grazing on Saline Lands Sub-program.

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