Forage mass and stocking rate of elephant grass pastures managed under agroecological and conventional systems

Abstract

-The objective was to evaluate elephant grass (Pennisetum purpureum Schum.) pastures, under the agroecological and conventional systems, as forage mass and stocking rate. In the agroecological system, the elephant grass was established in rows spaced by 3.0 m from each other. During the cool season ryegrass (Lolium multiflorum Lam.) was established between these rows, which allowed the development of spontaneous growth species during the warm season. In the conventional system the elephant grass was established singularly in rows spaced 1.4 m from each other. Organic and chemical fertilizers were applied at 150 kg of N/ha/year with in the pastures under agroecological and conventional systems, respectively. Lactating Holstein cows which received 5.0 kg/day supplementary concentrate feed were used for evaluation. The experimental design was completely randomized, with two treatments (agroecological and conventional systems) two replications (paddocks) and independent evaluations (grazing cycles). The pastures were used during the whole year for the agroecological system and for 195 days in the conventional year. The average values of forage mass were 3.5 and 4.2 t/ha and the stocking rates were 2.08 and 3.23 AU/ha for the respective systems. The results suggest that the use of the elephant grass under the agroecological system allows for best distribution of forage and stocking rate to be more uniform throughout the year than the use of elephant grass in conventional system.

Forage mass and agronomic traits of Elephant grass genotypes under free-growth and conventional cutting systems

“….year of palatable and highly nutritional forage (FARIA et al, 1996;OLIVO et al, 2013;LEÃO et al, 2012;SARAIVA, KONIG, 2013). Despite the various possible uses of Elephant grass, Valle et al (2003) warned about the low genetic diversity of cultivated pastures in Brazil, where only two genera (Panicum and Brachiaria) amount to 85% of all seeds marketed, consisting mainly of apomictic materials.…”

Forage mass, botanical composition and stocking density of bermudagrass overseeded with forage legumes

“…This result indicates that the Coastcross-1 was more consumed than other plants, with great participation in the botanical composition of the pasture. For the annual ryegrass and forage legumes, the values were proportionally lower (p < 0.05) due to the greater use of animals, related to the best nutritive value of these forages (Olivo et al, 2014). For other species, the participation value was similar to the initial forage mass value, showing a trend of lower intake due to the composition of this fraction by species of summer cycle.…”

“…Even with this performance, normally expected for grass-legume association, there are few properties using mixed system, due to the slow establishment and low persistence of the legumes in the pastures (Olivo et al, 2014). Also, there is some research to overcome these difficulties.…”

Agronomic traits, chemical composition and silage quality of elephant grass fertilized with poultry litter

“…However, researches have many times revealed problems such as increase in production costs, mainly for nitrogen fertilizers and rangeland degradation (Olivo et al, 2014).…”

“…This strategy is especially important in the case of the small farmers with low producing dairy cows, predominant in the tropics (Olivo et al, 2014). However, elephant grass may have high values of moisture, which may affect the quality of the silage by undesirable fermentation (Brant et al, 2017), and indicates the necessity for evaluation of its silage quality.…”