Drought severely limits forage productivity of C4 grasses across the tropics. The avoidance of water deficit by increasing the capacity for water uptake or by controlling water loss are common responses in forage C4 grasses. Napier grass (Pennisetum purpureum) and Brachiaria hybrid cv. Mulato II are tropical C4 grasses used for livestock production due to their reputed resistance to drought con...

The genus Pennisetum (Richard, 1805) includes two economically important tropical forage plants: Pennisetum purpureum (Schumacher, 1827) (elephant grass), with 2n = 4x = 28 chromosomes and genomes A'A'BB, and Pennisetum glaucum (Linnaeus, 1753) (pearl millet), with 2n = 2x = 14 chromosomes and genomes AA. The genetic proximity between them allows hybrids to be obtained (2n = 3x = 21) that yield...

Flooding is a natural disturbance affecting crop and forage production worldwide due to the detrimental effects that it provokes on most terrestrial plants (Bailey-Serres & Voesenek, 2008; Colmer & Vosenek, 2009). Over the last years, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (http://www.ippc.ch) has informed that man-induced world climate change will increase the frequency of precipitation...

UNLABELLED It has long been accepted that most vertebrate animals meet their vitamin D requirements from exposure of skin to UV-B (UV-B) radiation. Many factors affect this endogenous synthesis of vitamin D, including season, latitude, time of day, age, presence of hair, and degree of skin pigmentation. Most bats roost in dark places by day and forage at night, and thus have little or no potent...

The University of Minnesota Forage Team is proud to announce the second edition of the Forage Quarterly. The January issues ranges in content from alternative forage systems to acquisition of pasturelands. In addition to the valuable information in this edition, the UMN Forage Team would like to inform you of our upcoming winter meetings. The program was designed to address key forage productio...

Forage sorghum is considered to be the most heat and drought resistant summer forage with a fairly high green forage yield. Forage sorghum is more economical to grow as compared to forage maize with fairly high economic returns. The total area under forages in 2012 in Punjab was 1.82 million hectares with green forage production of 38.8 million tons. The land area of Punjab under forage sorghum...

Sixty Holstein cows were assigned to two treatments at 21 d before calving and were group-fed a prepartum diet with or without yeast culture. After parturition, cows were individually fed one of five treatments for 140 d: 1) 21% forage neutral detergent fiber (NDF) without yeast culture, 2) 21% forage NDF with yeast culture, 3) 17% forage NDF without yeast culture, 4) 17% forage NDF with yeast ...

The effect of stocking rate on forage growth has attracted much research attention in forage science. Findings show that forage growth may be affected by stocking rate, and there is a consensus that high stocking rates lead to soil compaction, which could also in turn affect forage growth because of the changing soil hydrology and increased soil impedance to forage root penetration. In this stu...

interval and that total forage production was higher for plots harvested at 6-wk compared with 4-wk intervals. Eastern gamagrass [Tripsacum dactyloides (L.) L.] is a perennial, The effects of plant population density on horticulwarm-season bunchgrass native to the Americas. Although much is tural and field crops is well established (Wade et al., known about the effects of fertilization and harv...