LEGUMINOSAS TROPICAIS: Desmanthus virgatus (L.) Willd. UMA FORRAGEIRA PROMISSORA TROPICAL LEGUMES: Desmanthus virgatus (L) Willd. A PROMISSING FORAGE CROP

Tropical legumes have a wide geographic distribution being found in many types of soil and climate. They have expressive values of richness and taxonomic diversity, belong to the third biggest botanic family referring the number of species, and most of them are associated with nitrogen fixing bacteria of the Rhizobium genera. The major expectative of the use of legume based pastures compared with isolated grass pastures is the reduction of costs relative to mineral nitrogen fertilizers. The search for self-susteinable production systems has acquired world level strength reinforcing the attention for native genetic resources of many countries and the Desmanthus virgatus (L.) Wild complex appears as an alternative of large potential as source of forage legume for the dry tropics. The present review aims to analye the actual possibilities of using members of the D. virgatus complex as forage plants and their intrinsic aspects and characteristics that can be managed to improve animal production systems.