Project:
Overcoming the knowledge gaps.
Who:
UNE in collaboration with Agrimix, JCU and CSIRO.
What:
The University of New England successfully secured a Drought Resilience Innovation Grant from the Australian Government’s Future Drought Fund. This project focuses on increasing grazing system resilience during drought conditions.
Why:
- The project aims to equip producers with the skills and confidence to develop higher quality pasture and forage conservation that increases landscape and grazing system resilience during drought conditions.
- To understand how deep-rooted legumes and irrigated forage species can help improve the drought resilience of livestock enterprises in northern Australia.
How the project will achieve this:
Using a co-learning approach to increase the adoption of deep-rooted legumes and conserved forage as key drought-resilient strategies for Northern Australian grazing systems.
The project will:
- Include 12 properties from 330 S to 150 S (NSW, QLD, NT) with a total area of 1.7 million hectares.
- Plant 5000 hectares of deep-rooted legumes to answer key questions on adoption constraints related to planting, establishment, fertility, grazing management and the production of conserved forage.
- Most of the 12 properties already have some Desmanthus or Stylosanthes established. Learnings from these areas will be critical to adoption and co-learning for future plantings.
- Each property will have a network of regional producers, consultants and scientists (JCU, UNE and CSIRO) to design comparisons, organise farm walks and deliver learning courses via Edge and Prograze for all regional producers.
ABOVE: UNE awarded $7.4m in Drought Resilience Innovation Grants (Photo: JohnCarnemolla)
STAY TUNED FOR UPDATES ON THIS IMPORTANT NEW PROJECT.
