Author: Angela M. ParkerPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Agronomy
Languages : en
Pages : 127
Book Description
Alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.) is grown worldwide and used fundamentally to meet the nutritional requirements by primarily ruminant livestock. However, nutritive value of alfalfa is severely limited by indigestible cell wall constituents, such as lignin. There have been many efforts to improve alfalfa digestibility by down regulating enzymes in lignin pathways to develop alfalfa with reduced lignin (RL) content. In 2015, RL cultivars were released for commercial use. The purpose of this research was to: 1) compare forage nutritive value and yield of a RL cultivar (HarvXtra) to non-RL cultivars and 2) to determine if a recalibration of the predictive equations for alfalfa quality (PEAQ) was necessary for adequate neutral detergent fiber (NDF) predictions for RL alfalfa. This research was established in six states across the USA in 2015 and continued until spring of 2017 for Objective one. Plant sampling for Objective two occurred in Ohio and Wisconsin in 2016. The experimental design was a randomized complete-block with a split plot restriction on treatment randomization, where harvest intervals (28-, 33-, and 38-day) were the whole plot factor and cultivar was the sub plot factor. For Objective one, the overall linear model for cultivar response to harvest intervals was significant and all cultivars responded similarly across harvest intervals and events. Reduced lignin alfalfa, 'HarvXtra-008' always had higher nutritive value than non-RL cultivars. Neutral detergent fiber digestibility (NDFD) for 'HarvXtra-008' was greater (P
