New legume capable of persisting in dry times

As major parts of Queensland are again in the grips of unusually dry conditions, Progardes, a recently released legume is demonstrating persistence in the harshest of conditions. The Progardes had received just two small rainfall events since December but was thriving. Agrimix General Manager Iain Hannah and JCU lecturer and researcher used the Richmond weigh-in as an opportunity to check on the progress of the Progardes trial plot. They are now extremely confident the Progardes will prove to be a fodder that can withstand some very tough conditions. The legume has proven extremely successful in central and southern Queensland where over 10,000ha have been successfully established. The Progardes has been proven to have 20 per cent protein content in the leaf and up to 12pc in the stem. Agrimix are now at the stage of commercial production in Central Queensland and with several trial plots across the north-west including a 250ha plot near Hughenden, Mr Hannah is confident it will prove to be a big plus to beef production in the north. Progardes (www.progardes.com.au ) is a perennial tropical legume developed over 20 years of research by Chris Gardiner from James Cook University and in recent years Agrimix, a Queensland based agriculture technology group. Progardes has been bred to be productive and persistent in clay soils and persist in low rainfall semi-arid conditions. The legume is a highly palatable legume, with high protein content, with good biomass potential, non-thorny and non-toxic, frost and grazing tolerant plant of around waist height. Progardes has the potential to make significant impacts on animal production and ecosystem function whether it is live weight gains, increased stocking rates, turn off weights and timing, improved wool production, reproductive performance, reduced methane production or sustaining grasslands. As testament to Progardes's strength, it was observed recently at the Richmond Beef challenge despite the 57mm of rain received all summer, to be about the only plant of value growing and providing protein and quality feed

Legume for semiarid clay sois: an update

Since writing the article "New pasture legumes for clay soils in dry environments" for the last issue of the Northern Muster some 10,000 ha of Progardes (www.progardes.com.au) has been sown across North, North West and Central Queensland on various land types including: Mitchell Grass Downs; cleared Gidgee/Boree; cleared Blackwood and Brigalow; and Barkly and Gulf land types. Agrimix Pty Ltd and various graziers undertook the planting of Progardes using numerous methods including: aerial seeding into dry native grass (Mitchell grass); aerial seeding into freshly pulled and/or old pulled Gidgee/Boree country; aerial seeding onto a fully cultivated seedbed; aerial seeded onto blade ploughed country,; aerial seeded into burnt country; fully disc cultivated and airseeded; and partially tyne cultivated and airseeded. The results of these various planting methods are pending

Successful pasture development at Cungelella: a grazier, a researcher and a seed company's perspective

Describes the need for legumes in the Brigalow/Buffel grass landtypes of Central Queensland and the successful introduction of Progardes Desmanthus and the resulting beef productivity

PROGARDES\u3csup\u3eTM\u3c/sup\u3e: A Legume for Tropical/Subtropical Semi-Arid Clay Soils

The range of available sown pasture legumes for the vast heavy clay soil regions of northern Australia has long been regarded as being deficient (Burt 1993; Jones and Clem 1997; Pengelly and Conway 2000). Indeed immense areas of northern Australia’s semi-arid clay soil regions have no sown pasture legume with proven adaptation and persistence through the long annual dry seasons (Gardiner and Swan 2008). The genus Desmanthus is a Mimosaceae legume containing some 24 species which are native to the Americas and range from being herbaceous to suffruticose in habit (Luckow 1993). Desmanthus is one of the very few legumes consistently observed to persist under heavy grazing on clay soils in their native environments (Pengelly and Conway 2000). Numerous accessions of Desmanthus were collected and introduced into Australia by various institutions, notably CSIRO and QDPI, over the past 50 years (Reid 1983; Pengelly and Liu 2001), as potential legumes for clay soils. After years of multi-site field evaluation of Desmanthus and other species, in 1991 QDPI released 3 Desmanthus cultivars, cvv. Marc (D. virgatus), Bayamo (D. leptophyllus) and Uman (D. pubescens), which were marketed as a blend named “Jaribu” (Cook et al. 1993). Currently, only cv. Marc is available commercially with a focus on southern subtropical Queensland markets. How-ever, Pengelly and Conway (2000) state that, owing to Marc’s low dry matter production, its contribution to animal diets and soil N is limited

Ergodic directional switching in mobile insect groups

We obtain a Fokker-Planck equation describing experimental data on the collective motion of locusts. The noise is of internal origin and due to the discrete character and finite number of constituents of the swarm. The stationary probability distribution shows a rich phenomenology including non-monotonic behavior of several order/disorder transition indicators in noise intensity. This complex behavior arises naturally as a result of the randomness in the system. Its counterintuitive character challenges standard interpretations of noise induced transitions and calls for an extension of this theory in order to capture the behavior of certain classes of biologically motivated models. Our results suggest that the collective switches of the group's direction of motion might be due to a random ergodic effect and, as such, they are inherent to group formation.Comment: Physical Review Focus 26, July 201

Nitrofurantoin and fosfomycin for resistant urinary tract infections: old drugs for emerging problems

Uncomplicated urinary tract infection is one of the most common indications for antibiotic use in the community. However, the Gram-negative organisms that can cause the infection are becoming more resistant to antibiotics. Many multidrug resistant organisms retain susceptibility to two old antibiotics, nitrofurantoin and fosfomycin. Advantages over newer drugs include their high urinary concentrations and minimal toxicity. Fosfomycin is a potential treatment option for patients with uncomplicated urinary tract infection due to resistant organisms. Nitrofu

Guidance in an uncertain world

In the face of the coronavirus pandemic, clinicians are looking to multiple sources for guidance. Good guidance provides a helpful tool to support decision making by experienced and highly-trained healthcare professionals. However, in the context of a readily changing landscape there are risks of guidance that hinders rather than helps, duplicates effort and fails to consider the front-line implications. Conversely, an overly conservative approach may result in good guidance never seeing the light of day, or being published too late. We suggest that there are key principles that may help guideline producers to improve the process. These include: addressing directly and transparently the competing risks and benefits to individual patients, staff and the wider community; making greater efforts to find reliable data to inform recommendations; ensuring duplication of effort and conflict with extant guidance is minimised; involving front-line staff in development and consideration of real-world implications of delivery; and ensuring that feedback and revisions are integral to the process. The MORAL Balance framework has previously been advocated for making complex individual patient level decision in critical care. We believe the same process can be appliedas a framework for guideline development groups

Intra‐cultivar potential of Desmanthus spp. as a greenhouse gas mitigation strategy for tropical livestock pastoral systems

Improved agricultural efficiency and reduction in the impacts of tropical livestock farming on habitat degradation require global approaches that enhance ruminant farming functionality in terms of feed use efficiency, emissions and food security. This study evaluated the in vitro mitigation potential of the prostrate to erect, herbaceous Desmanthus spp. pasture legume adapted to semiarid clay soil land types in northern Australia. D. bicornutus, D. leptophyllus and D.virgatus were seasonally harvested from commercial plots by Agrimix Pty. Ltd. Samples of the legumes and the control Rhodes grass (Chloris gayana) using ruminal fluid from grazing Brahman (Bos indicus) steers were incubated in vitro (Ankom RF1 Technology) for 24, 48 and 72 h. Overall, the in vitro organic matter degradability (OMD) and methane production between Desmanthus species differed (P < 0.001). Compared to the control (0.656 ± 0.027 proportion of total OM) at 48 h of incubation, D. leptophyllus showed lower OMD (0.479 ± 0.016), while D. bicornutus (0.688 ± 0.016) and D. virgatus (0.619 ± 0.015) were different from each other, but similar to the control. Methane production (ml/g OM) was 15.7 ± 1.54, 3.7 ± 0.89, 12.0 ± 0.95 and 11.7 ± 0.95, respectively. It is suggested that the impact of these attributes may benefit household farmers in developing economies to expand productivity, improve livelihoods and meet the growing food consumption. Further analyses of the intra‐cultivar characteristics of Desmanthus spp. will complement the design of sustainable and efficient interventions across tropical pastoral feeding systems, with a particular emphasis on large‐scale grazing operations

Personalities, Preferences and Practicalities: Educating Nurses in Wound Sepsis in the British Hospital, 1870 – 1920

The history of nursing education has often been portrayed as the subordination of nursing to medicine. Yet, as scholars are increasingly acknowledging, the professional boundaries between medicine and nursing were fluid in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when both scientific knowledge and systems of nurse training were in flux. Through its focus on the role of medical practitioners in educating nurses in wound sepsis at four British hospitals between 1870 and 1920, this article attempts to further unite histories of medicine and nursing. It demonstrates that, in this period of uncertainty, the ideas and practices relating to antisepsis, asepsis and bacteriology disseminated to nursing probationers depended on the individual instructor. In demonstrating the localised nature of nursing education, this article argues that further analyses of clinical problems like wound sepsis may enable historians to more clearly identify the importance of professional collaboration within the hospital