COMPARATIVE EVALUATION OF THE YIELD AND NUTRITIONAL VALUE OF GRASS AND LEGUME-GRASS SWARDS WITH FESTULOLIUM

Abstract

The paper presents the comparative evaluation of cereals and legume-grass mixtures with festulolium on yield and nutritional value. It’s established that the most optimal agrophytocenoses for festulolium in binary mixtures are formed when festulolium is sown with alfalfa and cocksfoot. Thus, in the first year the highest yield of grass dry matter was observed in the mixture of red clover and alfalfa – 4.4-4.6  t/ha. The second year showed that the most productive agrophytocenoses were formed on the basis of two-component swards with alfalfa. The dry matter yield reached 7.2 t/ha. In the third and fourth years the variants with included alfalfa and cocksfoot (12.8-13.5 t/ha and 10.8-11.1 t/ha of dry matter respectively) were turned to be the most productive in terms of green mass yield. Festulolium sown pure provided the lowest yield, which was 3.7-9.4 t/ha of dry matter, for the third and fourth years of the research. The evaluation of feeding value showed that grass sward was less nutritional than legume-grass one, the crude protein content amounted to 8.8-9.0% with metabolic energy concentration of 9.34-9.63 Megajoule/kg.