Fermentation profile and nutritional value of sunflower silage with Urochloa brizantha cultivars in the off-season

Abstract

SUMMARY Sunflower as silage is an alternative to be used in the off-season, when water shortage makes traditional crops unfeasible. However, exclusive sunflower silages have levels above 70 g/kg DM ether extract, which may impair ruminal fermentation. Thus, ensiling sunflower with tropical forages can bring benefits to the quality of the silage. This study evaluated the fermentation profile and nutritional value of sunflower silage with cultivars of Urochloa brizantha in the off-season. This was a completely randomized experimental design with four replications. The treatments were composed of the sunflower silage with and without addition of cultivars of Urochloa brizantha in the ensiling process: sunflower silage; sunflower silage + 30% Marandu palisadegrass; sunflower silage + 30% Xaraes palisadegrass; sunflower silage + 30% Piata palisadegrass and sunflower silage + 30% Paiaguas palisadegrass, totaling 20 experimental silos. The addition of the cultivars of Urochloa brizantha to sunflower silage contributed to improve the fermentation profile and nutritional value of the silages. Silages with 30% Piata and Paiaguas palisadegrass showed higher levels of CP and lower levels of ADF and lignin, and these cultivars are the most recommended for ensiling with sunflower.

Production and quality of sunflower and Paiaguas palisadegrass silage in monocropped and intercropping in different forage systems

“…The silage intercropping systems contributed to increase DM content of the silage, because of Paiaguas palisadegrass showed a higher level of DM, since it was harvested during 110 days of growing, with a content of 340 g kg -1 (Table 1), balancing the DM content of the sunflower. Similar results were obtained by Cruvinel et al (2017), who verified that the addition of Marandu palisadegrass; Xaraes palisadegrass; Piata palisadegrass e Paiaguas palisadegrass, in sunflower silage helped to raise DM content of the silage.…”

“…According to Sampaio et al (2009), fodders high contents of ADF are associate to a lower digestibility (Table 7). These results indicates that the fodder used in the experiments analyzed on this article is one of the best plants for the silage of intercropped sunflower, because it reduces the fibrous fractions of this farming, especially lignin contents (Cruvinel et al, 2017).…”

“…However, the lowest production of DM was obtained by Paiaguas palisadegrass monocropped forage system, demonstrating that the intercropping has contributed for the rise of DM production in 110.6; 127.9 and 48.9%, in the rows, inter-rows and oversown intercropped, respectively. Several studies have evidenced the benefits of producing silages from intercropping systems (Ribeiro et al, 2017;Cruvinel et al, 2017;Souza et al, 2019;Oliveira et al, 2020).…”

“…The rise of digestibility is probably associated to the modifications in the chemical fraction of ADF contents. This effect would allow the provision of promptly digestible carbohydrates for the rumens microorganisms (Fernandes et al, 2002;Cruvinel et al, 2017).…”

“…Besides that, the forage has been used for the production of silage in integrated systems, allowing great results (Santos et al, 2016;Costa et al, 2018;Souza et al, 2019;Oliveira et al, 2020). Cruvinel et al (2017) reported that the silage of additive sunflowers with tropical forages are able to bring great benefits to the quality of the silage, for example, decrease in the content of ethereal extract, in the fibers of acid detergents, lignin, in addition to the production of silage in the off season, with good quality and with sufficient amount for nutritional maintenance of ruminants.…”