Evaluation of Sunflower-Maize Silage for Yield and Quality Traits

Abstract

L ivestock sector of Pakistan has an important role in Pakistans agriculture system as a major portion of land area used in Pakistan is under fodder and forage cultivation. In agriculture, livestock as a subsector contributes a major part to value addition in agriculture. Currently, it contributes 60.6% to overall agriculture and 11.7% to GDP during 2019-20. Gross value addition increased with 2.5% during last year (Pakistan Economic Survey, 2019-20). There is continuous growth in population, urbanization is increasing, per capita income is increasing and apart from all this, there are increasing opportunities for Abstract | Silage is the term used for forage with a high moisture content preserved by fermentation. The main objectives of making silage are to preserve forage for use in those seasons when fresh forage is not available, to preserve forage when there is a surplus of it during the growing season, and to preserve forage that cannot be grazed. The experiment was carried out at research area, Department of Agronomy, College of Agriculture, University of Sargodha to evaluate the combined effect of sunflower and maize crop for the quality production of silage for enhancing the growth and production in the animals. Six maize hybrids were used along with the sunflower, tree were twelve treatments, each maize with sunflower as intercrop and only maize hybrids as solo crop. Outcome of research revealed that both of sunflower heads and maize plants have better combination for the silage production and the quality parameters like pH, moisture content, protein content, fat content and ash contents. The moisture contents of both the samples and combined silage had not much difference among them, but the protein content, fat content and the pH of the combined silage had remarkable difference among them. The Syngenta-8711 + sunflower and Monsanto-6142 + sunflower varieties were best and had maximum mean values for most of quality parameters, (Fat contents: 14.99%, moisture contents: 38.66%, protein contents: 17.41% and pH: 4.10). These varieties can be grown as intercrop with sunflower to get higher yield and quality of silage.