Selecting Chamaecrista rotundifolia for soil stabilisation and forage

• Fujian Academy of Agricultural Sciences, China

The best-adapted and most productive herbaceous legume for the infertile acidic red soils of South Central China is Wynn cassia, Chamaecrista rotundifolia. There are now 130 accessions of this species available, providing opportunities to select a variety well adapted to the red soils region and more palatable to livestock. The proposed program is to screen in southern China a selected sample of 40 accessions from this collection, and to characterise the entire collection at a molecular level. Suitable varieties would provide smallholders in southern China with a source of forage for developing livestock industries, an acid-tolerant species to sow in orchards, a ley crop in rotations with winter cereals and a soil ameliorant in revegetation of eroded hillsides.