Nutritional composition of 'Ponta Negra' forage sorghum silage enriched with dried Leucaena leucocephala forage

Abstract

he aim of this study was to evaluate fermentation and chemical characteristics and the in situ degradability of sorghum silages enriched with dried Leucaena. The experiment was conducted as completely randomized design with four treatments (0 - control silage, silage without leucaena; 10.0, 20.0, or 30.0% inclusion of Leucaena) and five replicates, totaling 20 experimental units. The inclusion levels of leucaena influenced (P 0.05), with all silages having values above 90%. Gas loss decreased (P < 0.05) as the level of leucine increased in sorghum silage. A linear increase was observed for dry matter (P ? 0.0001) and crude protein (P = 0.0008) contents in response to Leucaena inclusion. There was a linear (P < 0.05) linear effect on neutral detergent fiber, hemicellulose and acid detergent fiber. As leucaena inclusion levels increased, for each 1% inclusion a reduction of 0.179 was observed; 0.059 and 0.119% for the values of neutral detergent fiber, hemicellulose and acid detergent fiber respectively. The inclusion of leucaena influenced (P < 0.05) the increase of silage lignin levels, probably due to the higher lignin content of the legume. The soluble fraction (a) of the silages increased along with the Leucaena inclusion levels, with highest values observed at the inclusion of 20 and 30% of the legume, respectively. Potential degradation (A) increased linearly with the levels of Leucaena added to the silage; the highest value for this variable was observed at 30% inclusion. Effective degradability (ED) increased up to the inclusion level of 20% (46.77%). Degradation rate (c) decreased markedly with the use of 30% Leucaena. The use of the forage part of Leucaena dried for three hours leads to reduced gas production, increased dry matter and crude protein contents, and decreased fiber contents. The degradability of dry matter increases up to the inclusion level of 20%.

Ciências agrárias: estudos fundamentais

“…A produção de silagem utiliza as mais diversas espécies forrageiras com alta produtividade e disponibilidade em cada região, apesar de ser uma cultura bem difundida, de fácil colheita e apresentar boas características para silagem, o milho demanda grandes investimentos para produção, portanto, gramíneas de gênero Pennisetum que apresentam menores custo de produção são amplamente utilizadas para ensilagem (Ferreira et al, 2018). Para produção de silagem ainda pode-se aproveitar a produção do excedente no pasto com gramíneas do gênero Panicum e Brachiaria, assim como em regiões de menor pluviosidade podem ser adotadas espécies como Milheto (Thomas et al, 2013;Costa et al, 2019), e em climas mais utiliza-se cactáceas como a Palma Forrageira (Pereira et al, 2020).…”