• • • Festulolium as grass mixture with red clover
Three field experiments in 2012, 2014 and 2015 showed Festulolium, cultivated with red clover varieties of different ripening rate, to compete effectively with common timothy mixtures in dry matted (DM) yield. Festulolium mixtures with clovers (long-season “Kirovskiy 159” and ultra short-season “Kretunovskiy”) yielded 5.63–6.08 t DM ha-1 on the average for 2 years. Cultivating red clover of various ripening rates with short-season Festulolium and long-season timothy reduced drought influence during the growing season. Drought at early vegetation significantly affected short-season crops; precipitations at early budding resulted in high forage mass yield. Precipitations before the second cut increased green mass, particularly for two-cut clover variety. Under dry growing season fraction of gramineous was up to 31% and had no effect on DM yield. Under low clover density and sufficient precipitations before the first cut gramineous number significantly increased up to 43.1–53.3%, improving DM yield, particularly for Festulolium mixtures. Festulolium mixtures with “Kretunovskiy” yielded up to 4.0 t DM ha-1, with “Kirovskiy 159” — 4.46 t DM ha-1, while timothy mixtures — 2.86 and 3.0 t DM ha-1 respectively. Weather affected less DM productivity of “Kretunovskiy” (V — 13.3%). Common timothy (V — 13.59%), grown with “Kirovskiy 159”, increased productive sustainability.
Source: https://kormoproizvodstvo.ru/en/7-2018-2/, p. 15
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