Cultivation of festulolium mixed with alfalfa foraging purposes in the forest-steppe of Western Siberia

Abstract

Festulolium is a promising but little-studied fodder crop. The authors found that in the year of laying the herbage of Festulolium in mixtures, the height of plants increased by 6–11% compared with singlespecies sowing. However, the number of shoots per plant decreased from 3 to 2, and the root length decreased by 20%. The survival rate of plants was 84.9–97.4% after winter, depending on the year of sowing. Survival decreased to 46–92% for alfalfa in mixtures, and it was as low as 46–84% when sown with mixture seeds. This was affected by a decrease in reserve nutrients - sugars in the roots of plants. The sugar content decreased by 26%, from 5.14% to 3.77%. No positive effect was observed when sowing with alternating 1–3 rows of festulolium and 1 row of alfalfa. The introduction of nitrogen at a dose of 30 kg a.i. (active ingredient)/ha increased the efficiency of skip-row planting and sowing with a mixture of seeds by 21% due to the positive responsiveness of the components to fertiliser. An increase in the nitrogen dose to 60 kg/ha harmed alfalfa, reducing its share in the herbage to 7% by the third year of use. This decrease was due to the displacement of the more nitrogen-responsive festulolium. The efficiency of crops increases with a reduction in the share of the cereal component and an increase in the percentage of legumes with an alternation of rows of 1:3. The yield was 35.7–42.7 t/ha of green mass, which is higher than that of the single-species sowing of festulolium by 19–53%. The increase is due to an increase in the leaf coverage of alfalfa plants up to 46–49% (against 44% in control) due to the optimisation of layering in the herbage. The introduction of nitrogen at a dose of 30 kg/ha contributes to an increase in yield by 14% (0.43–5.0 t/ ha) due to the increased share of the cereal component in the mixture, an increase in the number of shoots on the plant by 11.1% and their mass by 12.5–17.8%. The introduction of N60 in the joint crops of festulolium and alfalfa is not advisable since it does not give a significant increase in yield and does not pay off the costs incurred.