SWEET LUPINS

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 72, Issue 6238, 5 June 1946, Page 3

SWEET LUPINS

FATTENING FOOD STOCK

1 EXPERIMENTS. .IN MANAWATU An advance likely jto take its place with the great forward moves in New Zealand farming methods is the introduction of two new varieties of sweet lupins for fattening feed and dairying stock. The lupins open up the possibility of bringing thousands of acres of sandy soils into production. Sweet blue lupin could replace rape as fattening feed and the sweet yellow variety has already proved very suitable 'for reclaiming sandy soils.

Experiments with both varieties are at present being conducted by the Department of Agriculture in the Manawatu district, and details released recently prove that blue lupins are quite palatable to sheep and cattle once they get used to them. Both lupins produce heavy crops on most soils, and an important point is that they are free from the ravages of insect pests and blights. The trials have indicated that lupins give better fattening crops for lambs than rape grown on the same land. Lupins also can be fed off at any stage of growth. Seed is one of the major difficulties at present connected with lupins as it is difficult to harvest, the pods bursting very readily. Therefore, the present cost of seed, which is around £1 a bushel, is a drawback to the more extensive use of the crop. There is, however, every reason to believe that the experiments now being conducted stand a fair chance of evolving sweet lupins with nonshattering pods.