engleski

Influence of intercropping sweet sorghum with soybean on forage yield and quality

Cereals are highly important in feeding ruminant animals for their high dry matter production and low cost. Sweet sorghum is an important silage crop and has an increasing popularity because of the need for relatively smaller quantities water per unit dry matter production of maize. Regarding high feed costs of protein supplementations, legumes can be used in livestock nutrition for their high protein content, thus, providing cost savings. Since legumes have low dry matter yield, acceptable forage yield and quality can be obtained from intercropping cereals and legumes compared with their sole crops. Sweet sorghum and soybean intercropped in various row ratios and pure sweet sorghum crop were evaluated to determine the best intercropping system with respect to forage yield and quality. The highest dry matter yield over two years (20.6 t ha-1 ) was produced by intercropping 1 row of sweet sorghum with 3 rows of soybean, whereas the lowest yield (17.9 t ha-1 ) was produced with intercrop consisting of 1 row of sweet sorghum with 1 row of soybean. All intercropp had higher crude protein values in dry matter averaging 105 g kg-1 for the 1SB1S, 116 g kg-1 for the 1SB2S and 128 g kg-1 for the 1SB3S, than the monocrop of sweet sorghum (72 g kg-1 ). Intercropping of sweet sorghum with soybean reduced neutral detergent fiber content, which in turn, resulted in increased forage digestibility. Based on forage yield and quality, this study showed that among all intercropped forages the 1SB3S treatment was better performing than other intercrops.

Intercropping, Sweet Sorghum, Soybean, Yield, Forage Quality

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