Annual forage production from spring-planted winter cereal monocrops and mixtures with spring barley

Abstract

Spring-planted winter cereals grown as monocrops or in mixture with spring cereals maintain yield and quality into late summer and fall, and can be used to replace or complement perennial pasture. Our objectives were to determine the response to clipping of spring-planted winter cereals, and to determine the effects of seeding rates and ratios of spring to winter cereals on this response. Monocrops of winter triticale (X Triticosecale Wittmack) cv. Pika and winter rye (Secale cereale L.) cv. Musketeer and mixtures of these cereals with the spring barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) cv. Noble were evaluated. Tests were conducted from 1991 to 1993 at Botha and Lacombe, AB. Mixtures of spring:winter cereals were 0:100, 25:25, 25:75, 50:50, 75:25, 75:75 and 100:100 (Lacombe only), where the ratio of components represented the percentage of the base seeding rate of 250 seeds m−2. Biomass yields for triticale treatments (5.5 t ha−1 at Botha and 6.3 t ha−1 at Lacombe for the May to October growing season) were generally as high as for the rye treatments (5.9 t ha−1 at Botha and Lacombe); however, at Lacombe, spring regrowth after overwintering for triticale treatments was only 0.6 t ha−1 compared with 1.0 t ha−1 for rye treatments (LSD0.05 = 0.17). As little as 25% spring barley in a mixture ensured good early-season biomass yields, but more than 50% reduced late-season biomass yields. All treatments produced good-quality forage with protein >20%, neutral detergent fibre (NDF) <45% and acid detergent fibre (ADF) <30%. Nitrate contents were frequently >0.5% at both sites in 1991 and 1992, especially for those treatments with spring barley. Key words: Winter triticale, winter rye, annual forage, biomass, forage quality