Uses of Australian Medic and other Legumes in the United States Essay

Uses of Australian Medic and other Legumes in the United States In recent years the United States has been experimenting with the uses of medics, clovers and other forms of legumes which include sweet clover, rose clover, crimson clover, barrel medic, button medic, Australian medic, burr medic, nitro alfalfa, and spotted medic just to name a few of the long list of plants used in these experiments. The purpose of these experiments were to determine the benefits of intercropping these legumes with non-nitrogen fixating crops such as corn, sunflowers and many others. Some of the suggested benefits would include using less fertilizer, gained water infiltration into the soil, and reduced soil erosion. A study was conducted in Stephenville, Texas over several years to determine the types of medics and clovers that could possibly be used in areas of the United States that have high temperatures in the summers with limited precipitation, another objective of the experiments conducted in Stephenville was to determine the affects of harvest height, as herbage removal affects the reproduction of the stand in following years. Some cool-season annual species looked to be promising candidates for this particular experiment. Many of these species have become widely naturalized across the Great Plains region of the United States which indicates adaptation to climate, soils, local vegetation, and pathogens (Muir et al., 2005). One of the biggest factors in the growth and reproduction of medic is the climate, especially temperature and rainfall, has the strongest effect on legume production. Annual Australian medic species that are accustom to the long growing seasons in southern parts of the continent took ten to seventy ... ...provided by these plants. References Groose, Robin W., 1999. Lamb Chops and Rolls on 12 Inches of Rain. Casper Star Tribune. Kandel, H.J., B.L. Johnson, and A.A. Schneiter. 2000. Hard Red Spring Wheat Response Following the Intercropping of Legumes into Sunflower. Crop Science 40:731-736 Muir, James P., William R. Occumpaugh and Twain J. Butler, 2005. Trade-Offs in Forage and Seed Parameters of Annual Medicago and Trifolium Species in North-Central Texas as Affected by Harvest Intensity. Agron. J. 97:118-124 Sheaffer, Craig C., Steve R. Simmons and Michael A. Schmitt. 2001. Annual Medic and Berseem Clover Dry Matter and Nitrogen Production in Rotation with Corn. Agron. J. 93:1080-1086 Smeltekop, Hugh, David E. Clay and Sharon A. Clay. 2002. The Impact of Intercropping Annual ‘Sava’ Snail Medic on Corn Production. Agron. J. 94:917-924