Forage yield and quality potential of winter cereal-vetch mixtures<br>under rainfed conditions

Abstract

Livestock in rainfed area of Pothwar often faces green fodder scarcity during winter months and thus has to survive on cereal residues of previous crops such as wheat straw, summer sorghum, corn stalk etc. which are not rich source of protein and digestible nutrients. The basic objective of this experiment is to produce more fodder for livestock production and food for community. The investigations were carried out to evaluate the yield and quality of oat (Avena sativa L.), barely (Hordeum vulgare) and wheat (Triticum aestivum) in pure stands as well as in mixture of 50:50 ratios with common vetch (Vicia sativa L.) under rainfed conditions of Pothowar to address the problem of nutritious green fodder for livestock in the region. From the result of this study, it is evident that oatvetch mixture performed better under rainfed conditions of Pothowar in terms of green and dry matter yield. By this mixture, 37.97 tons ha-1 green and 9.28 ton ha-1 dry matter yield were obtained which are 20 % higher than the pure stand of oat respectively. Similarly, it was found that overall oat + vetch, mixture yielded 63% and 78% higher dry matter than barley + vetch and wheat-vetch mixtures, respectively. Cereal + vetch mixture also produced higher crude protein content than their respective pure stands. Oats-vetch, barley + vetch and wheat + vetch resulted in 11.31%, 7.04% and 5.80% higher crude protein contents than their cereal pure stands respectively. With the advancement of growth stage, green fodder yield increased progressively while reverse was observed for qualitative traits. Maximum green fodder yield was obtained at 50% heading stage while maximum crude protein content was achieved at tillering stage in this study. On the basis of these field qualitative and quantitative investigations, cereal + vetch mixture is recommended for both obtaining higher tonnage and nutritious fodder under the rainfed conditions of Pothowar.

Periodic Assessment of Dry Matter Production and Nutritional Value of Millet Legumes Mix Fodder

“…Similar effect of harvesting was observed on the dry matter yield of legumes. The increase in forage yield with delayed harvesting has also been reported by other workers [5,7,17].…”

Forage yield and quality of simple and complex grass-legumes mixtures under Mediterranean conditions

“…From Table 2 it can be seen that, at cut I, the highest dry matter was obtained by the common vetch (T10) that was not significantly different from T8 compared to almost all the other treatments. For for both cuts and unlike another studies (Ansar et al, 2010;Alami et al, 2015), no significant differences were recorded between binary and ternary mixtures. This occurrence is not in agreement with the conclusions of Papadopoulos et al (2012), who reported increased forage yields when mixture complexity increased.…”

Producción y calidad de forraje en mezclas de veza común con cebada, avena y triticale en cuatro etapas fenológicas

“…This is because oats shows greater complementarity with vetch because better use nitrogen fixed by the legume on the ground compared to other grasses. Another factor may be the physical ability of species to grow; it has been shown that weight and plant height are higher in oatvetch mixtures than with barley-vetch or wheatvetch (18) , furthermore oats grow better in competition; previous studies indicate that this crop shows a linear increase in competition with vetch as the density increases oat (11) . These qualities allow the oats have better growth and consequently increased production of dry matter (19) .…”

“…In the present study, the CP varied depending on the type of mixture and at what harvesting stage it was evaluated. The highest amount of crude protein was found in the mixtures oat-vetch and triticale-vetch during booting stage; and in terms of seed mixture ratios, the vetch monoculture obtained the highest during the grain mature stage, followed puede ser la capacidad física de las especies en crecer; se ha demostrado que el peso y la altura de la planta son más altos en mezclas de avena-veza que en asociaciones de cebada-veza o trigo-veza (18) , además, la avena se adapta mejor a la competencia; estudios previos indican que este cultivo muestra un incremento lineal en competición con la veza conforme la densidad de la avena incrementa (11) . Estas cualidades le permiten a la avena tener un mejor crecimiento y en consecuencia mayor producción de materia seca (19) .…”