12/13/2010

New Lespedeza Cultivar Ideal for Ground Cover, Live Mulch

AUBURN, Ala.—The Alabama Agricultural Experiment Station has released a hardy new sericea lespedeza cultivar that lends itself to multiple uses, including as a top-quality ground cover for rights of way, embankments and golf-course roughs and as living mulch for vegetable and possibly other crops.

The cultivar, AU Pixie, is a perennial warm-season legume that has an attractive cascading appearance, is drought tolerant and can grow in soils with low acidity and fertility levels, said Jorge Mosjidis, the Auburn University agronomy and soils professor and plant breeder who developed the cultivar.

AU Pixie is so named, he said, because while other sericea lespedeza varieties grow upright and reach 40 to 45 inches in height at maturity, the new cultivar’s maximum height is only about 20 inches. At that point, its outer stems bend downward and spread in a loose, low-growing ground cover.

“We believe that, given its low growth and other characteristics, AU Pixie has a wide range of applications,” Mosjidis said.

The new cultivar adapts to a wide range of soil types and can be grown throughout Alabama and in other regions where sericea lespedeza is commonly grown. As is the case with other sericea lespedeza varieties, AU Pixie helps protect soil from erosion, adds organic matter and nitrogen to the soil and is rarely affected by disease or insects, Mosjidis said.

Those qualities contribute to its value as living much. In field trials Mosjidis conducted in east-central Alabama in 2006 and 2007, pumpkin yields in fields where AU Pixie had been planted between rows were 34 percent higher than in conventionally planted pumpkin fields. The AU Pixie fields also produced 30 percent more pumpkins than the bare-soil fields.

As a perennial, AU Pixie’s stems and foliage die after the first hard frost in the fall. Plants are dormant during the winter, and new growth starts the following spring. Plants will regrow after cutting.

AU Pixie is the eighth improved sericea lespedeza cultivar the AAES has released since its first, Serala, in 1962. The most recent before AU Pixie was the 1997 release of AU Grazer, the first grazing-tolerant sericea lespedeza.

As for AU Pixie’s current availability status, the Alabama Crop Improvement Association, which is the official foundation seed organization for the state, is now in the process of working out a licensing and seed-production agreement with a private entity, and AU Pixie seeds could be on the market within the next 18 months, said association executive vice president Jim Bostick.

For more information on AU Pixie, contact Mosjidis at 334-844-3976 or Bostick at 334-693-3988. A brochure is available online at www.aaes.auburn.edu/comm/pubs/agronomy/aupixie.pdf.

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OFFICE OF AG COMMUNICATIONS & MARKETING
Auburn University College of Agriculture
Alabama Agricultural Experiment Station
3 COMER HALL, AUBURN UNIVERSITY
AUBURN, AL 36849
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AgComm@auburn.edu