Hybrid Alfalfa

One goal of the Iowa State University forage breeding program is to increase alfalfa yields. In many crops such as corn, hybrids have been used to increase yield. Hybrid alfalfa varieties could be a possible way to increase alfalfa forage yield. Commercially available alfalfa varieties are purple flowered and are of the sativa type. A second type of alfalfa, falcata, has yellow flowers and is more winter hardy and morphologically distinct from sativa alfalfa. We made sativa-falcata hybrids and tested them to determine if hybrids would outperform commercially available varieties and thus offer the possibility of creating higher yielding varieties for Iowa