Guar: A Drought-Tolerant Cover Crop for Extreme Conditions
See how guar performs in our 2016 test plot. Learn why this legume is one of the most drought-tolerant crops grown in the U.S., how it handles heat and salty soils, and why livestock prefer it in grazing mixtures.
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0:00 This is Gwar. Guar is probably the most drought tolerant crop grown in the United States. They commonly grow it.
0:08 Out in West Texas under dry land conditions, very very drought tolerant, very heat tolerant. Now it's
0:14 We've been growing here and we do irrigate this plot so it looks really really nice. This is the nicest Gwar I've ever seen.
0:22 But it will survive extreme drought conditions because the plant has the ability when it runs out of water it
0:29 Just simply stops and then when it gets moisture it can start up again. Most plants cannot do that. They either need.
0:35 Water or they die. Gwar is a bean you can see it's putting on lots of pods. It kind of puts them on in clusters like this.
0:44 This Gwar is fairly mature. Gwar is going to be a decent grazing crop. It's got good nutritional qualities.
1:00 Industry, yeah, and this is the plant. If you've ever read a list of ingredients on ice cream or pudding, guar gum is this.
1:08 Bean is where the guar gum comes from, so this is used for human consumption when this is put out into a grazing mixture.
1:15 Typically this is one of the very first things that are they're eaten by livestock and another benefit of this is.
1:23 If you have salty soil, there are very few legumes. Especially summer annual legumes have any salt tolerance whatsoever. This is probably the most salt tolerant annual legume, especially for warm season. Yeah, for a warm season plant, this is probably the best.