Plant biodiversity theory suggests that increased plant species diversity contributes to the stability of ecosystems. In managed grasslands, such as pastures, greater stability of herbage production would be beneficial. In this retrospective study, I used data from three reports from the 1930s, 1940s, and 1960s to determine whether increasing mixture complexity contributed to yield stability wi...

Italian ryegrass is one of the most important temperate forage grasses on a global basis. Improvement of both dry matter yield and quality of herbage have been major objectives of pasture grass breeding over the last century. F1 and F2 progeny sets derived from controlled pair-crosses between selected Italian ryegrass genotypes have been evaluated for yield and nutritive quality under field con...

three grass species, agropyron desertorum (agde) and agropyron elongatum (agel) and recently, bromus tomentellus (brto) are mainly used for range improvement as mixed seeding in semi-arid areas of iran. because there is little information about management of these grasses, this study was conducted at the sisab research station in northern iran to evaluate their responses to grazing management a...

The effects of (i) herbage allowance, (ii) frequency of allocation and (iii) grass silage feed value on ewe and lamb performance were studied in mid-gestation ewes. Furthermore, the effects of (i) herbage allowance, (ii) frequency of allocation and (iii) grazing date and their interactions on subsequent herbage yield and feed value were also evaluated. Swards, which had a cut of silage removed ...

Perennial ryegrass is the most abundant grass species in temperate climates. An increased herbage intake of dairy cows by breeding new cultivars could have a large potential impact on agriculture. The effects of cultivars on sward structure, nutritive value, physical characteristics and disease resistance of perennial ryegrass are discussed. Cultivar differences were found in several studies fo...

Understanding the impact of changing pasture composition on reducing emissions of GHGs in dairy grazing systems is an important issue to mitigate climate change. The aim of this study was to estimate daily CH₄ emissions of dairy cows grazing two mixed pastures with contrasting composition of grasses and legumes: L pasture with 60% legumes on Dry Matter (DM) basis and G pasture with 75% grasses ...

OBJECTIVE The study aimed to assess the N use efficiency (NUE) of pig slurry (in comparison with chemical fertilizer) for each regrowth yield and annual herbage production and their nutritive value. METHODS Consecutive field experiments were separately performed using a single application with a full dose of N (200 kg N/ha) in 2014 and by four split applications in 2015 in different sites. Th...

A number of factors influence dairy cow preference to be indoors or at pasture. The study reported here investigated whether herbage mass and distance affects preference and if continuously housed cows exhibited behavioral and production differences compared to cows that had free access to pasture. Dairy cows (n = 16) were offered a free choice of being in cubicle housing (1.5 cubicles/cow) or ...

greenhouse pots was higher (r 5 0.60) under water stress than under non-stress conditions (r 5 0.49) (McIntosh A positive association between root morphology and herbage yield and Miller, 1981). Peterson (1982) reported that lateral in alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.) has been reported previously. To root number and total forage yield were moderately further investigate this association, we created...