Effect of advancing maturity stages of corn for silage on chemical characterization, digestibility and production costs

Abstract

The goal of the present study was to evaluate the biomass and grain yield, the morphological and chemical composition, production costs and the ruminal disappearance of the whole corn plant and grain-free corn plant harvested at different reproductive stages. The experimental design was completely randomized, consisting of six treatments, where each treatment corresponded to a stage of corn maturity. The advance of plant cycle promoted an increase in dry biomass and grain yields per unit area, reducing production costs. Higher participation of grains and lower participation of structural components promoted a reduction in NDF and ADF, with the lowest values in dough grain (R4) and dent grain (R5) stages. The advancement of stages promoted an increase in production and a reduction in costs, but significantly reduced the quality of grain-free plants, increasing the NDF, ADF and ADL; but R4 and R5 presented NDFd of 84.80 % and 82.79 %, respectively, showing to be a good quality fiber. R4 stage had the highest rumen disappearance values after 24 and 48 hours of incubation. Based on chemical data, ruminal disappearance, ruminal degradation kinetics of the whole corn plant and without grains, the R4 stage of the evaluated hybrid is the stage at which the plant had the best quality, representing the appropriate stage to harvest the material for making silage, aiming at the production of a silage with good chemical quality.