Publication - Growing and managing alfalfa in Canada

Title in English
Growing and managing alfalfa in Canada
Publication ID
1705E
Published Year
1982
URL
Author(s)
Subject(s)
Type
Book
Cost
Free Publication
Language
English
Also Available In:
Status
Available
Pages
1-50
ISBN
0-662-11808-1
Catalogue No.
A53-1705/0982E
Summary in English
Alfalfa, the 'queen of the forage crops', is the most popular and important forage legume grown in Canada. Called Lucerne in many countries outside North America, it is thought to have originated in southwestern Asia with Iran as the geographic center of origin. Alfalfa was cultivated long before recorded history and is now found growing wild from the subtropical to the subtract areas of the world. The wildest historical record indicates that alfalfa was cultivated and prized as a highly nutritious animal feed in Persia and Turkey more than 3300 years ago. The first recorded attempt to grow alfalfa in the United States was in Georgia in 1736. However, it was not until 1850, when 'Chilean clover' was introduced to California from Chile, that its rapid expansion and growth in popularity began. Alfalfa was first introduced to Canada in 1871. A shepherd accompanying some sheep imported from Lorraine, France, brought 1kg of seed to a farm in Wetland, Ont. This strain subsequently became known as Ontario Variegated and is still grown occasionally in Eastern Canada. Succesful culture of alfalfa in northern United States and Canada was not possible until the more hardy variegated strains of medico media (purple flowered M. sativa yellow-flowered M. falcate) were introduced. The earliest and most important of these introductions was by the German immigrant Wendell Grim, who brought 8 kg of medico media alfalfa seed from his native Germany when he settled in Minnesota in 1857. After several successive severe winters in Minnesota, a very hardy strain eventually resulted and Grimes alfalfa soon advanced successful alfalfa culture into the northern states and Canada. Further selection for winter hardiness by professors John Bracken and L.E. Kirk of the Field Husbandry Department, University of Saskatchewan, resulted in the distribution in 1926 of Breeder seed of the winter-hardy strain 666 off grim alfalfa. Alfalfa is grown in every province of Canada.
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