A NEW variety of French serradella has proved to be the perfect fit for farmers in the low-medium rainfall areas of WA, who were chasing an early season option better suited to their acid soils.
Fran2o is the first short season and hard seeded French serradella cultivar available for broad scale agriculture in the low rainfall zone and serves as a replacement to Margurita which was released more than a decade ago.
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Its seed is also 35 per cent larger than other hard seeded cultivars, such as Margurita and Erica, which promotes early vigour and improved competition against weeds when sown correctly and at the right time.
Narembeen farmer Clint Butler had been growing Margurita for about 12 years with plenty of success, but due to the dry finishes common to the area, he was after something shorter.
"Fran2o was two weeks earlier to flower than Margurita and that was what appealed to me - it would fill as much seed as possible quicker," Mr Butler said.
"Also, with the Margurita it was going too long and when I wanted to spraytop for ryegrass, the pods were still green so you were sterilising the seed.
"I wanted something shorter so when I went to spraytop it, the timing was right and Fran2o has served that purpose."
A big advantage of Fran2o is its aerial seeding nature, allowing producers to harvest the pod with a conventional header in early summer.
The pod tends to segment during the harvesting process and because of this, it flows well through harvesters and augers.
According to professor John Howieson, who is managing the commercialisation of Fran2o through Murdoch University's spin-off company LegumeN Pty Ltd, Fran2o is perfectly suitable for summer sowing in this form because of its hard seed trait.
"Normally with hard seeded serradella the seed is removed from the pod and then scarified at the cleaning shed to allow them to germinate when sown in winter," professor Howieson said.
"Instead in summer sowing, the pod segments containing hard seed are sown into the soil at one centimetre in February or March.
"The climate exposes the seed to the natural temperature and moisture conditions that break the hard seed dormancy, preparing the seed for germination in mid-autumn."
Farmers who wish to buy scarified seed for sowing in early winter can do so from the licensed producers, or if they want to try summer sowing then they can purchase pod segments.
At Narembeen, Mr Butler farms about 4000 hectares, 3000ha of which is cropped and the other 1000ha left out for the 1200 Merino ewes and 150 UltraWhite-Kojak ewes which he runs.
He got a licence to grow Fran2o in 2020 and started with 40ha which yielded about 800 kilograms per hectare in a dry year with just 200 millimetres of annual rainfall.
Since then he has increased to about 300ha sown this year and yields have also improved with about 1t/ha in 2021 and 2022 after 350mm and 360mm of rainfall respectively.
Other licensed seed producers, who have started harvesting Fran2o, have reported pod yields as high as 1.5t/ha on the back of a good growing season this year.
Mr Butler started growing serradella more than a decade ago to try to get more of a return on lighter acid soils with a low pH.
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"We wanted lower inputs on those paddocks, rather than continuing to pour nitrogen on and not getting yields which we wanted," he said.
It was something which Margurita did successfully and which Fran2o has continued to do.
"Before the serradella, we could never crack 2t/ha and now we can get those paddocks to perform at over 3t/ha.
"That's the benefit, we get a return off those paddocks with a low input costing," Mr Butler said.
"The paddocks that the Fran2o have already been seeded on will continue to regenerate for years and I plan to keep spreading it around the farm on the soil types I want to put it on.
"I only put about 15 units of nitrogen on a crop after Fran2o and I was closing the gate on that as it yielded close to 4t/ha."
Fran2o was recently evaluated in WA, South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales in low-medium rainfall environments and the experiments showed crops grown after it required much less nitrogen fertiliser to achieve high protein, compared to crops grown after barley, wheat or canola.
Professor Howieson said some Fran2o pastures in WA this season fixed the equivalent of $400 worth of nitrogen per hectare, calculated at the current price for urea.
"This is the reason that crops grown in rotation with Fran2o are so vigorous and require less than 20 units of starter nitrogen after a good stand of the legume," he said.
Fran2o is protected by Plant Breeder's Rights and has been licensed to some WA producers with a track record in serradella seed production.
