B.C. PENGELLY and D.A. EAGLES

Division of Tropical Crops and Pastures, CSIRO, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

Abstract

A collection of 275 accessions of the pantropical legume genus Teramnus was grown and classified to enable selections for plant improvement programs to be made from the current collection of the genus. Eighteen groups were defined on the basis of 28 morphological and agronomic attributes. Group membership was strongly correlated with the geographic origin of collections.
Of the 7 species represented in the collection, only 3 (T. labialis, T. repens and T. uncinatus) appear to have a combination of attributes that suggest they have potential as forage legumes with some members of the 3 species being strongly perennial and stoloniferous. The majority of accessions of the genus originated from humid and sub-humid tropical regions and were most frequently collected from neutral or alkaline heavier-textured soils suggesting that the agronomic potential for the genus is probably limited to similar environments.