News Release
June 17, 2008

June 17, 2008

Yellow-flowering alfalfa topic of June 26 field day

Jerry Schuman, an adjunct professor in the University of Wyoming’s College of Agriculture, is one of the featured speakers at a South Dakota field day focused on yellow-flowering alfalfa.

Schuman will discuss how yellow-flowering alfalfa can increase forage production and quality of native plants and its role in sequestering carbon in rangelands. Carbon dioxide is an important greenhouse gas.         

The field day is 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Thursday, June 26, on the Bud Smith ranch in Perkins County, South Dakota, which is near northeastern Wyoming. It is being organized by the South Dakota Cooperative Extension Service (CES).

Researchers in Wyoming and South Dakota, along with ranchers in the two states who have seeded yellow-flowering alfalfa, are confident the plant will boost forage quality and quantity on native dry lands in the northern mixed-grass prairies of Wyoming, Nebraska, Montana, Colorado and the Dakotas.

The plant is a subspecies of alfalfa also known as falcata. Like other legumes, falcata releases nitrogen into the soil, and nitrogen is one of the most limited nutrients in native rangelands, said Schuman, an adjunct soil science professor in the UW College of Agriculture’s Department of Renewable Resources and retired U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) soil scientist.

Other speakers include Smith, whose family has successfully seeded falcata into native rangeland vegetation since approximately 1915, South Dakota CES Range Management Specialist Roger Gates and others.

For more information about the field day, contact South Dakota CES Agronomy Educator Bob Drown at (605) 244-5622 or robert.drown@sdstate.edu.

“Inquiries have been received from Wyoming seed companies and ranchers who are interested in attending,” Drown said.

Additional information about yellow-flowering alfalfa is at http://uwadmnweb.uwyo.edu/UWag/news/Yellow-Alfalfa.asp.

Ranchers interested in planting falcata can contact their UW Cooperative Extension Service county office (http://ces.uwyo.edu/Counties.asp) or a seed dealer, or contact Schuman through the federal USDA Agricultural Research Service’s High Plains Grasslands Research Station near Cheyenne at (307) 772-2433. Schuman’s e-mail address is jerryschuman2@msn.com.

Schuman is involved in three falcata-related studies in Wyoming. He is collaborating with Bret Hess, an associate professor in the UW College of Agriculture’s Department of Animal Science, and others.

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Contact: Steven L. Miller, Senior Editor
Phone: (307) 766-6342
E-mail: slmiller@uwyo.edu
Archived News Site http://uwadmnweb.uwyo.edu/UWAG/news.asp

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