Long-Term Liming Regime Increases Prime Lamb Production on Acid Soils

Abstract

Prime lamb live weight response to lime application on pasture was measured in a grazing experiment in the high rainfall zone of the southwestern slopes of New South Wales, Australia. The pastures were limed every 6 years over 15 years. First cross South African Meat Merino lambs were used as test animals. Preand post-grazing pasture dry matter (DM) yield, botanical composition, feed quality and lamb live weight were monitored over 12 weeks in 2007. Results showed that liming significantly increased pasture DM yield of high quality species and improved overall pasture quality due to increased digestibility and metabolic energy content. As a result, the limed perennial and annual pastures carried 24.0% (3.6 lambs ha −1 ) and 29.0% (4.4 lambs ha −1 ) more stock than the unlimed perennial and annual pastures, respectively. Averaged across pasture types, the limed pastures produced 30.6% (131 kg ha −1 ) more lamb live weight gain than the unlimed pastures over 12 weeks. The live weight gain varied between grazing cycles depending on the availability of feed-on-offer and feed quality, which were closely related to the rainfall pattern. The perennial pastures did not show any advantage in animal production over annual pastures during the experimental period due to lack of moisture in the deep soil profile because of severe drought in the previous year. More seasons with normal or above average rainfall are needed to compare animal production on perennial pastures and annual pastures to investigate the advantage of perennial pastures in animal production.

Performance of tetraploid alfalfa genotypes as exposed to aluminum toxicity

“…It is estimated that 40% of arable land and 70% of non-agricultural soils in the world have a high level of acidity [1]. Such a profile poses a major obstacle to agricultural production due to the direct effects of this abiotic stress on the root system and its consequent impact on plant growth [2][3][4][5]. In addition, toxic levels of aluminum (Al) and manganese (Mn), and deficiencies of calcium (Ca), magnesium (Mg) and phosphorus (P) are common in these conditions [3,6].…”

“…In most cultivated species, the genetic variability within the germplasm is not pronounced, making it difficult to obtain cultivars tolerant to this stress [16]. In the absence of Al-tolerant genotypes, liming is the alternative to raise soil pH, thereby reducing the toxicity of aluminum [5]. However, liming does not correct the acidity of the subsoil, and this procedure is not always easy to perform and economically viable [20,21].…”

Simulation of soil organic carbon dynamics under different pasture managements using the RothC carbon model

“…The value of intake rate, α at MASTER experiment, was estimated as 0.5, while the value of digestibility, β, was 0.7 (Chen et al, 2009). Hence, f sb = 0.65 was used for this simulation.…”