The Florida Cattle Enhancement Board has funded research that helps to support forage development as well as improving management practices. We sat down with Dr. Jose Dubeux with the University of Florida to learn more.
Dr. Dubeux said, “ With those funds I’ve been able to address different needs, not only for my research program but for the cattle industry in Florida. And I’ll give a few examples, you know, we’re fine-tuning, for example, the management of limpo grass for North Florida, try to understand, you know, how the new released varieties like Gibtuck limpo grass behaves and how long can you stockpile and how does the nutritive value and productivity and all that works here. I know that’s being well-developed in South Florida, but here it’s kind of a new neighborhood for those varieties. So you’re trying to develop and make recommendations for the users.”
“And that helps not only the research but also the extension side. The Enhancement Board has also been supporting us in the distribution program of planting material for limpo grass, so that has been helping a lot of producers. But in addition to that, we’ve been also assessing different management practices or even new varieties or new legume species, for example. Right now we have a project trying to develop a new common vetch for Florida, which could be a great fit. So we have been receiving the support from the Enhancement Board to develop those varieties and we are moving forward with that. And not only that’s just an example, we have another project with this module, which is one of the few legumes that really works well in Florida. So we’ve been advancing some of those lines with the support of the Enhancement Board as well, with the hope that we can get to release some of these products for the industry later,” said Dubeux.
“So in summary, the funding has been very, very important for my program. And I think also helps a lot to the carer men because of their inputs and their needs and they get to select what they think is important, like I mentioned earlier. So it’s been critical, not only for the research, but also from the extension perspective to advance my program. I hope that can continue in the future because it is an important program,” said Dubeux.
Audio Reporting by Dale Sandlin for Southeast AgNet.