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...

Worldwide there are between 10 and 11 million hectares of coconuts. With the marked fluctuations and long term decline in copra and coconut oil prices the integration of livestock and coconuts is economically increasingly attractive. Traditionally used for weed control in plantations so that coconuts could be located, cattle (and sheep and goats) are increasingly seen as important parts of the ...

Legume–grass mixture can greatly improve soil fertility to support the sustainable productivity. Root litter is an important source of organic matter, but its link with nutritional status in forage mixtures not clear. This study was aimed uncover whether relationship carbon (C) and nutrients between root would change mixing ratio. Changes C, nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P) were studied a 2-year ex...

This study investigated the dose-dependent response in lamb meat of stable nitrogen isotope ratio to the dietary proportion of legumes, and the ability of the nitrogen isotope signature of the meat to authenticate meat produced from legume-rich diets. Four groups of nine male Romane lambs grazing a cocksfoot pasture were supplemented with different levels of fresh alfalfa forage to obtain four ...

Alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.) is an important legume forage crop with great economic value. However, as the growth of alfalfa is seriously affected by an inadequate supply of water, drought is probably the major abiotic environmental factor that most severely affects alfalfa production worldwide. In an effort to enhance alfalfa drought tolerance, we transformed the Arabidopsis Enhanced Drought T...

Red clover (Trifolium pratense L.) is one of the most important legume forage species in temperate livestock agriculture. Tetraploid red clover cultivars are generally producing less seed than diploid cultivars. Improving the seed setting potential of tetraploid cultivars is necessary to utilize the high forage quality and environmentally sustainable nitrogen fixation ability of red clover. In ...

Viral attacks on natural populations of herbaceous forage legumes might have adverse effect on seed and herbage production, hence this study was carried out to investigate the type and incidence of viruses occurring on these plants in Nigeria. Protein A-sandwich (PAS) and antigen-coated plate (ACP) enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISA) were used to detect ten legume viruses from 100 leaf s...

BACKGROUND Studies of perennial peanut (Arachis glabrata Benth.) suggest its hay and haylage have greater levels of rumen undegraded protein (RUP) than other legume forages such as alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.). Greater RUP can result in more efficient nitrogen utilization by ruminant animals with positive economic and environmental effects. We sought to determine whether, like red clover (Trifo...

Near-infrared reflectance spectroscopy (NIRS) analysis is based on the development of calibration equations that relate constituents and the infrared information spectrum. This study compares 2 chemometric tools for developing NIRS prediction models: the GLOBAL modified partial least squares and the recently calibration strategy known as LOCAL. The LOCAL procedure is designed to select, from a ...

The inclusion of grain and green manure (GM) or forage legumes in cereal production systems on the Prairies does improve the fertility and quality of soils (Wright 1990; Campbell et al. 1992; Green and Biederbeck 1995; Biederbeck et al. 1998). Legume-based cropping systems can also reduce nitrogen losses and greatly increase the proportion of crop residuecarbon that is sequestered in stable soi...