White Tephrosia

White tephrosia (Tephrosia candida), called safed sarphonk, is a tall pinnate-leaved leguminous shrub used as a nitrogen-fixing hedge and green-manure species in the wetter foothill country of Pakistan. POWO records its native range as the Indian subcontinent, including Assam, Bangladesh, the East Himalaya, India and Nepal, which puts the KPK hills and the wetter end of the Pothohar plateau inside its natural climatic envelope.¹ For a grower trying to rebuild a degraded slope or shade a young orchard, it is one of the most useful pioneer shrubs available.²

Where it thrives

The plant grows from sea level up to about 1500 metres in subhumid to humid country with 900 to 2500 mm of rainfall. It performs on acid, low-fertility soils where leucaena and many other agroforestry legumes stall, raising soil organic matter from around 1.7 percent to 4 percent in two years of fallow in Vietnam trials.²³ In a Pakistani setting it suits the rain-fed slopes of KPK and the wetter Pothohar belt; on the dry Indus plains it will need a watering edge or runoff catchment to establish.

Role in the system

White tephrosia sits in the shrub stratum as a pioneer. Its real jobs in a guild are three. First, it fixes atmospheric nitrogen through root nodules and feeds the soil through deep, repeat root turnover.² Second, it works as a temporary shade and nurse plant over young perennials such as citrus, coffee, tea and cassava, and as a contour hedge that holds slope soil in place.²³ Third, it tolerates hard coppicing, so it suits chop-and-drop management: cut the hedge low, drop the prunings as mulch over the food crop, and let it regrow. It is a soil-building shrub, not a fodder plant; the foliage contains rotenoids and is unsafe for livestock.³

Growing it

Establish from seed. Soak seed in water for four to five hours, then sow at the start of the monsoon, either broadcast at 15 to 20 kg per hectare for a fallow stand or in lines at roughly 50 by 50 cm for a contour hedge.³ Fresh seed germinates near 95 percent; viability drops fast in warm storage, so use seed within a season unless it is kept cool and dry. First-year growth is the slow phase, after which a healthy stand cuts 25 to 30 tonnes of green matter per hectare in three cuts a year on good ground, and 10 to 18 tonnes on poor acid soil.³ Cut at knee height before pods harden so the regrowth flush is leafy.

What you get

The product is fertility and structure, not feed. Repeated chop-and-drop returns nitrogen, organic matter and a measurable lift in soil phosphorus and potassium to the cropping bed below.² The dried stems serve as light fuelwood, and powdered leaves have a long record of use as a fish poison and crude insecticide, which is the other side of why the plant is not grazed.³

Sourcing notes

Source fresh seed through an agroforestry nursery or research station in the KPK or Pothohar belt; old seed will let you down. Plant it as a contour hedge above slope-grown maize, vegetables or young fruit trees, with a herbaceous understory beneath. Keep it fenced off from livestock and label hedges where village goats roam.

Sources

1. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (2024). “Tephrosia candida DC.” Plants of the World Online.
2. World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) (2009). “Tephrosia candida.” Agroforestree Database.
3. Plant Resources of South-East Asia (PROSEA) / Pl@ntUse (2016). “Tephrosia candida (PROSEA).” PROSEA Foundation.