Eight varieties of perennial ryegrass (six new varieties and two old ones) grown at five levels of applied fertilizer (100, 200, 300, 400 and 500 kg of N ha?1) were cut monthly during two growing seasons (March to October in 1997 and 1998) and their herbage dry-matter (DM) yield and nitrogen (N) content were determined. Herbage leaf content and the N content of young fully expanded leaves were also measured in 1997, and monthly recovery of applied N was determined in both the first and second harvest years by using 15N. The rank order of varieties was similar for annual yield of DM and N at all five fertilizer levels. Proportional differences between varieties in DM yield were greatest in the first cut of each year, the late-heading candidate variety Ba12151 out-yielding the old late-heading variety S23 by more than 70%. However, differences in annual DM yield were much more modest than in early spring yield, up to 10% in 1997 and up to 21% in 1998. The relatively small differences in total annual DM yield were attributed to only a small proportion of the applied N being recovered during a single regrowth period, most of the remainder becoming available for uptake in subsequent regrowth periods. There were small but highly statistically significant differences among varieties in the N content of their leaves, leaf N content being inversely related to yield of DM and N. This lends further support to the hypothesis that the metabolic cost of protein synthesis and turnover is a key factor controlling genetic variation both in leaf yield and in annual DM and N yield under frequent harvesting. Seasonal variation in herbage N content was much greater than differences among varieties in mean N content over all harvests. In May of both years at all applied fertilizer levels, herbage N content fell below the 20 g N kg?1 DM level required by productive grazing animalsPeer reviewe
In official forage grass variety trials in the UK, herbage samples are dried at 100°C or more to facilitate quick drying of the large numbers of samples that are currently needed. When assessing herbage quality, however, 80°C has been recommended as the highest temperature that can be used during drying without serious deterioration. Herbage from six perennial ryegrass varieties, which were known to show a range of variation in in vitro concentration of digestible dry matter (DMD) and water‐soluble carbohydrate concentration (WSC) during the vegetative phase of growth, was dried in an oven with forced ventilation at 100°C and at 80°C before analysis. Mean DMD over all varieties was slightly lower [6 g kg−1 dry matter (DM)] and mean WSC over all varieties was considerably lower (24 g kg−1 DM) at 100°C. Varieties differed in mean DMD over both drying temperatures by 37 g kg−1 DM and in mean WSC by 63 g kg−1 DM. There was, however, no significant interaction between variety and drying temperature for either DMD or WSC. Although drying at the higher temperature underestimated both DMD and WSC, it did not significantly alter the ranking of varieties or the range among them.
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