266 Journal of Agriculture, Victoria. [10 May, 1919. 



LOLIUM SUBULATUM, VIS., "WIMMERA" RYE-GRASS. 



A Hardy Species of Rye=Qrass Hitherto Unrecorded in 

 Victoria, and of Great Promise for Sowing of Pastures 

 in the Wheat Belt— if Controllable. 



By H. A. Mullett, B.Ag.Sc, Science Field Officer. 



Increasing the Sheep-carrying Capacity of Land in the 

 Wheat Belt. 



During the present era of high prices for wool and mutton it should 

 not be difficult to interest the farmers of the wheat belt of this and other 

 southern States in any feasible method of materially increasing the stock- 

 carrying capacity of their resting arable lands. Over 4,000,000 sheep 

 are now carried in the wheat belt of Victoria. They represent one-third 

 of the total number of sheep in the State. The value of the wool alone 

 shorn from these sheep amounts annually to several millions sterling ; the 

 value of the mutton is also considerable. The returns from sheep now 

 figure so largely on the average wheat farm that to increase the number of 

 sheep carried to the acre is the keen desire of every fanner. 



One of the ways in which this might ba done, if a suitable plant were 

 available, would be to replace the present natural grass and wild-oat 

 pastures in the usual rotation systems practised, viz., fallow, wheat, oats, 

 followed by pasture, or alternatively fallow, wheat, and then pasture, 

 with some plant of greater productivity. 



Numerous plants have been tested- from time to time for this purpose, 

 but so far the best results obtained, though payable, are not of a high 

 order. The ordinary cultivated annual grasses do not readily re-establish 

 themselves under northern climatic conditions, and as annual crops they 

 do not often repay the high initial cost of their establishment. Thus the 

 sowing of Italian rye grass after cereals as a temporary pasture — a 

 British practice — has no vogue here in the wheat belt. Again, perennial 

 grasses such as English rye, cocksfoot, &c., and the clovers, do not survive 

 the long dry summer. 



The plant showing greatest promise, so far, is perhaps lucerne, the 

 well-known summer-growing legume, which owes its drought resistance 

 to its vigorous tap-root-, but since its growth is dependent on summer 

 rains, which do not materialize in three seasons out of five, it is, except 

 in favoured sites, a doubtful succcess. Light sowings of King Island 

 Mellilot (Melilotus parviflora) — an annual — have proved useful on the 

 black soils of the Wimmera; but in this case the practice is more note- 

 worthy for the low cost of the seeding than for the bulk of feed produced. 



The ideal plant for temporary pastures, besides being capable of easy 



and cheap pro[)agation and of fitting in generally with wheat and sheep 



farming, must be regularly higlily productive, and, lastly, it must be 



controllable. , 



A New Grass for Temporary Pastures. 



The present writer believes that a plant which much more nearly satis- 

 fies the above conditions than any of the plants previously mentioned, in- 

 cluding natural pastures, exists in the shape of a certain annual species of 

 rye grass, known locally as " Italian " rye grass, which has flourished and 

 persist-ently re-seeded itself on a number of typical Wimmera and Mallee 

 farms for periods, in several cases, up to and even exceeding a quarter 

 of a century. Strangely enough it attracted little notice during that time. 



