Experience with browse plants in Australia is briefly reviewed in terms of their forage value to animals, their economic value to the landholder and their ecological contribution to landscape stability. Of the cultivated species only two have achieved any degree of commercial acceptance (Leucaena leucocephala and Chamaecytisus palmensis). Both of these are of sufficiently high forage value to be used as the sole source of feed during seasonal periods of nutritional shortage. Both are also leguminous shrubs that establish readily from seed. It is suggested that a limitation in their present use is the reliance on stands of single species which leaves these grazing systems vulnerable to disease and insects. Grazing systems so far developed for high production and persistence of cultivated species involve short periods of intense grazing followed by long periods of recovery. Similar management may be necessary in the arid and semi-arid rangelands where palatable browse species are in decline. © 1992 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Item Type:	Refereed Article
Research Division:	Biological Sciences
Research Group:	Plant biology
Research Field:	Plant biology not elsewhere classified
Objective Division:	Plant Production and Plant Primary Products
Objective Group:	Other plant production and plant primary products
Objective Field:	Other plant production and plant primary products not elsewhere classified
UTAS Author:	Lefroy, EC (Professor Ted Lefroy)
ID Code:	46566
Year Published:	1992
Web of Science® Times Cited:	39
Deposited By:	Centre for Environment
Deposited On:	2007-08-27
Last Modified:	2011-08-30
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