Quality of sorghum silage with leucaena

Abstract

This study evaluated the effect of increasing levels of leucaena forage in sorghum: forage. In addition to pure sorghum, it was evaluated different levels of inclusion of leucaena (15, 30 and 50%) at the time of ensiling. Forage was ensiled in PVC tubes (100 mm diameter, 500 mm length) under the density of 500 – 600 kg m-3, a total of 20 silos were prepared, which were opened 35 days after ensiling. There was no effect (p > 0.05) of leucaena inclusion levels for pH, water activity (Aw) and total ammonia nitrogen (total NH3-N). There was an increasing linear effect (p < 0.05) for the content of dry matter (DM), crude protein (CP) and lignin that increased from 33.47 to 34.75%, 7.82 to 16.05% and from 7.29 to 9.93%, at the levels from 0 to 50% inclusion of leucaena, respectively. There was a decreasing linear effect (p < 0.05) for neutral detergent fiber corrected for ash and protein (NDFcp) and hemicellulose, which reduced from 56.65 to 48.37% and from 24.07 to 17.67% at the levels of 0 and 50% inclusion, respectively. For the ash content, there was a quadratic effect (p < 0.05), with a maximum at 8.3% with 8.9% inclusion of leucaena. The inclusion of up to 50% leucaena into sorghum silage is recommended, because, in addition to maintaining the fermentation quality, it also improved nutritional quality of sorghum silage.

Chemical composition, kinetics of degradation, and digestibility of forage of different purpose sorghum cultivars

“…In all sorghum cultivars, ideal NDF levels were observed, which is closely correlated with dry matter intake, since values above 60% are negatively correlated with forage intake (Mertens, 1987;Van Soest, 1965). Andrade et al (2019) obtained similar values to those found in this study.…”

Sustainable Production of Maize with Grass and Pigeon Pea Intercropping

“…Legumes naturally present a higher CP compared to other forage resources [40,41]. Therefore, their addition to silages can increase their nutritional value [42][43][44]. Silage from PPPG intercropping can be an important alternative when other protein sources are lacking and/or are too expensive to compose the ruminant diet.…”

Fermentation dynamics, nutritional quality, and heating capacity of mixed silages of elephant grass (Pennisetum purpureum Schum) and Leucaena (Leucaena leucocephala)

“…For example, silages with greater inclusion of Leucaena (60 and 80% inclusion) presented pH values above the limit (3.8-4.2) recommended by McDonald et al (1991). This effect is attributed to the high buffering capacity of Leucaena (Gandra et al, 2017) associated with its low content of soluble carbohydrates (Andrade et al, 2018).…”