Forage Yield, Canopy Characteristics, and Radiation Interception of Ten Alfalfa Varieties in an Arid Environment

Abstract

An increasing demand for new and improved livestock forage products is driving the development of forage systems in arid regions. Our study evaluated the productivity of 10 alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.) varieties and the relationship between forage yield and canopy structure traits, such as plant height, branch number, stem/leaf ratio, and leaf area index in the arid Hexi Corridor, north-west China. Here, plant height, primary branch number per plant, and stem/leaf ratio were positively correlated with forage yield. In terms of a two-year total yield, Gannong No. 5 produced the highest value (13,923 kg ha−1), followed by the WL342HQ (12,409 kg ha−1), Phabulous (11,928 kg ha−1), and Xinjiang Daye (11,416 kg ha−1) varieties. Therefore, these four alfalfa varieties are suitable for large-scale cultivation in the Hexi Corridor region and other arid areas where the effect of precipitation is even larger than that of temperature. These results provide valuable information for the selection and cultivation of alfalfa varieties, which could improve forage yield and the production of livestock in arid regions.

Effect of genotype and environment on agronomical characters of alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.) in a typical acidic soil environment in southwest China

“…Previously, the correlation between agronomic traits and yield as well as their contribution rate were used to determine whether agronomic traits could be used as reference indicators for germplasm selection (Monirifar, 2011;Jia et al, 2022). In this study, PCA and related analysis results showed that PH, NS, FW, TFW, DW, and TDW all had a significant positive correlation, and the higher the RSL, the better the yield performance.…”

“…1) with strong adaptability and high grass yield were screened through GGE evaluation of the dry weights of 44 alfalfa varieties at multiple locations over 2 years. Jia et al (2022) conducted a 3-year study on yield and agronomic traits of 10 alfalfa varieties in the Hexi Corridor region. Through the analysis of grass yield, they found that the yield of Xinjiang daye (11,416 kg/ha) was lower than that of Gannong No.…”

“…Agronomic traits such as RSL, ST, FW, TFW, PH, NS, RDF, DW, and TDW are key indicators used to evaluate both the quality (Bhattarai et al, 2020;Jia et al, 2022;Sayed et al, 2022) and productivity of alfalfa varieties (Singer et al, 2017). However, previous studies on alfalfa have primarily focused on agronomic traits in a single place or year (Tucak et al, 2008;Inostroza et al, 2021) as well as the development of simple sequence repeat primers (Flajoulot et al, 2005;He et al, 2020) and transcriptome analysis (Chen et al, 2011;Liu et al, 2017).…”

“…In addition, year × environment and genotype × year × environment interactions significantly influenced most of the phenotypic traits. Jia et al (2022) analyzed the productivity of 10 alfalfa cultivars in the Hexi Corridor region for 3 years and found that there were yearly differences in agronomic traits and productivity between varieties. Genetic variation in key traits of other important forages and legumes has also been studied in detail, including that of ryegrass (Lolium perenne L.) (Humphreys, 1991), white clover (Trifolium repens L.) (Jahufer et al, 2002), and yellow sweet clover (Melilotus officinalis L.) (Luo et al, 2016).…”

Irrigation and Phosphorus Management of Alfalfa Under Semi-Arid Conditions

“…The height of alfalfa could positively correlate with the yield (Lyons et al, 2016) and even the forage quality (Owens et al, 1995) and therefore, it has been used to estimate yield or forage quality characteristics by many researchers (Ventroni et al, 2010;Noland et al, 2018). Height is mainly characterized by genetic factors (He et al, 2020) but environmental factors might have a substantial effect on the height of alfalfa (Jia et al, 2022). Besides, Cui et al (2021) determined that the height of alfalfa decreased with the advancing years of the plantation.…”