Leucaena feeding systems in India

Abstract

Keynote paper presented at the International Leucaena Conference, 1‒3 November 2018, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.Since its introduction to India in 1976 Leucaena leucocephala ssp. glabrata has spread rapidly, especially in the last couple of decades, mainly due to its use as either firewood or pulpwood. Use of its foliage for feeding livestock has been mainly a by-product of this activity. The foliage is highly nutritious because it has high protein concentration and good palatability, and the tree can withstand repeated defoliation. Research carried out by Indian scientists on leucaena has focused on mainly agronomic management, agroforestry studies of mixed cropping systems, mimosine toxicity, germplasm testing and economic evaluation. Feeding leucaena has had a positive impact on the dairy industry in particular. It is rarely purchased for fodder and is usually poached by smallholders from existing plantations, most of which are established by animal rearers for their own purposes. More widespread use of leucaena for fodder could be achieved in India by introducing varieties with either reduced seed production or sterile ones, which can be easily propagated vegetatively. In addition, psyllid resistance, suitable mechanized harvesting methods and training livestock owners in proper management of leucaena trees should help in making this high quality fodder more popular in India.

International Leucaena Conference 2018: Highlights and priorities

“…There was general agreement at the conference that, despite overwhelming evidence for the high productivity, profitability and sustainability of leucaena feeding to ruminants around the world, adoption of the innovation was universally well below expectations. Presentations from Australia (Buck et al 2019b;Kenny and Drysdale 2019), Colombia (Zapata Cadavid et al 2019), Argentina (Radrizzani et al 2019a;, Mexico (Ramírez-Avilés et al 2019), Indonesia (Dahlanuddin et al 2019), Thailand (Nakamanee et al 2019a), Myanmar (Aung 2019) and India (Nimbkar 2019) all reported that more needs to be done to increase adoption of this highly successful innovation.…”

Tropical Grasslands-Forrajes Tropicales Vol.7 No.4 [Sep 2019]

“…Animal productivity. Conference delegates confirmed that leucaena is a highly palatable, productive and profitable forage option used by beef producers in northern Australia (Buck et al 2019a; and by beef, dairy and goat producers in Colombia (Pachas et al 2019;Rivera et al 2019;Zapata Cadavid et al 2019;), Mexico (Ramírez-Avilés et al 2019), Paraguay (Glatzle et al 2019), Argentina (Radrizzani et al 2019a;, Indonesia (Dahlanuddin et al 2019;Waldron et al 2019), Myanmar (Aung 2019), India (Nimbkar 2019), Thailand (Nakamanee et al 2019a;, Venezuela (Escalante 2019) and Cuba (Ruiz et al 2019).…”

“…There was general agreement at the conference that, despite overwhelming evidence for the high productivity, profitability and sustainability of leucaena feeding to ruminants around the world, adoption of the innovation was universally well below expectations. Presentations from Australia (Buck et al 2019b;Kenny andDrysdale 2019), Colombia (Zapata Cadavid et al 2019), Argentina (Radrizzani et al 2019a;, Mexico (Ramírez-Avilés et al 2019), Indonesia (Dahlanuddin et al 2019), Thailand (Nakamanee et al 2019a), Myanmar (Aung 2019) and India (Nimbkar 2019) all reported that more needs to be done to increase adoption of this highly successful innovation.…”