Texas, USA 2010 - International Herbage Seed Group

The aim of the current study was to investigate if the timing of desiccation (quantified using daysand thermal time) and harvest timing have any effect on the harvested seed yield in white clover.MethodsTrial sites were selected in two farmer fields and the Chertsey FAR demonstration site. The sitesand cultivars were:i. Leeston on a good soil with cv Riesling, a mid-large leaf-size cultivarii. Lincoln on a heavy soil prone to winter water logging and more exposed to cool easterlywinds in summer with cv Tribute, a medium leaf size cultivar,iii. Chertsey on a shallow Templeton soil with cv Tribute.Flower numbers were counted weekly with a 0.25m 2 quadrat, with two counts per plot, one ateach end of the plot. Flowers were counted if they had 3+ open florets and had less than half theflorets turned down from pollination. Temperatures were recorded at the nearest availableweather station, for Lincoln this was located approximately 5 km from the trial site, for Leestontemperature data was sourced from Pendarves, approximately 16 km away and at Chertsey aweather station was located approximately 150 m from the trial area.Prior to harvest all management was undertaken by the host farmer. Plots were desiccated atweekly intervals and harvested with two strips cut by a rotary lawn mower, dried and threshed.Yields from these plots were adjusted relative to the mean yield of an adjacent machineharvested topping trial. Statistical analysis of data used GenStat v9.ResultsFlower head production increased per week at all sites and peaked approximately 5 weeks afterDecember 1 st , for example at the Leeston site flowering peaked at 250 flower heads/m 2 on the 5 thJanuary (Figure 1.).173