Meningie

Meningie is located on the shores of Lake Albert and is the site of of Wanderibby, a corporate grower for NyPa Australia. Meningie was the location for the first planting of NyPa Forage in the eastern states. The first plants were planted in the mid 1990's, and have been bulked up since that time. Initially this site did not perform as well as at Wickepin, with many plantings failing and growth rates were much less than in Western Australia. Many of the failed plantings can be attributed to the soil salinity at planting and reduced growth rates to low soil fertility and shorter growing season. Soil salinity at planting is a critical factor on the success of establishment. While NyPa Forage is able to tolerate extremely high salinities when established, it is a little more susceptible during the establishment phase. This cooler climate location has demonstrated that NyPa Forage can still produce forage in cooler climates, however the growing season is shorter, and growth rates reduced.

At this site, NyPa Forage has been growing in some highly saline environments, with soil salinities ranging up to 16 dS/m (EC 1:5). Ground water salinities within this area have been measured from 30 - 100+ dS/m, and are at a depth down to 1 m. Pasture samples have been taken over the past year and are summarized below. These samples were analyzed by the Western Australia Chemistry Laboratory, Perth.

 

Table 1. Nutritional data from Wanderibby from samples grown from October 2003 to February 2004.

	Leaves	Stems
Crude protein (%)	6.6	3.7
Ash (%)	13.6	10.2
Digestibility (%)	56	50
ADF (%)	37	43
ME (MJ ME/kg DM)	9.6	8.6

Climatic Data
Average rainfall (mm/yr)	467
Average number of days with a max temp. above 30 degrees	31
Average number of days with a min temp. below 2 degrees	8
Average number of clear days	58

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This page was last updated on the 25 Oct 2004