Legumes in hill country pastures are critical as for every tonne of legume dry matter produced, around 25 kg of Nitrogen is fixed and made available for grass growth. In summer dry environments, white clover often fails to persist through droughts and sub clover may be the only legume with long term persistence. But unless sub clover is managed to encourage seed set, it can also disappear on dryland hill farms. The result can be a thatch of low productivity grasses. Given the potential benefits in animal performance, there is great interest in techniques to establish and manage annual clovers on hill country.
