Intense human activities break the grassland–livestock balance and accelerate grassland degradation. We evaluated use of native dominant species combined with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) in order to recover restrain conducted a full factorial greenhouse experiment evaluate interaction effects distinct traits grass Lolium perenne (L) legume Trifolium repens (T) inoculation on productivity...

Lucerne has been found to be a valuable pasture plant for young sheep (Morley and Axelsen 1965; Reed, Snaydon and Axelsen 1972), but its value for fattening cattle has not been compared with that of grass legume pastures such as phalaris-subterranean clover. The effect of pasture species may depend on stocking rate, and perhaps influence the weights at which different breeds of cattle are ready...

Sixty-four intact lambs and twenty-four lambs fitted with a duodenal cannula were weaned at 6 weeks of age and grazed pure species swards of either lucerne (Medicago sativa), white clover ((Trifolium repens), ryegrass (Lolium perenne) or prairie grass (Bromus catharticus) for 6 weeks. Intake and duodenal digesta flow were estimated when lambs were 8 and 12 weeks of age. Lambs grazing the two le...

The voluntary intake (VI) of separated leaf and stem fractions of a grass and legume (Panicum maximum and Lablab purpureus respectively) was determined using Hereford steers fistulated at the rumen and oesophagus. VI of leaf fractions was higher than that of the stem fraction (8.23 v. 3.67 kg/d, P less than 0.001) while that for the legume diets was higher than for the grass diets (6.65 v. 5.22...

In order to provide recommendations on the most useful forage species to smallholder farmers, eleven grass and eleven legume forages grown in Abomey-Calavi in Republic of Benin were investigated for nutritive value (i.e. chemical composition and energy content) and fermentation characteristics (i.e. gas and volatile fatty acid production, organic matter degradability). The in vitro gas producti...

Two primary approaches to perennial biofuel crop production studied so far are fertilized grass monocultures and low-input high-diversity grasslands. While high-yielding perennial grass varieties are being developed in fertilized monocultures, breeding for yield in low-input high-diversity systems would be difficult. Before initiating breeding for low-input systems, it is therefore important to...

Symbiotic interactions are thought to play a key role in ecosystems. Empirical evidence for the impact of symbiotic bacteria on plant communities is, however, extremely scarce because of experimental constraints. Here, in three complementary experiments, we show that nitrogen-fixing rhizobia bacteria act as a determinant of plant community structure and diversity. Grassland microcosms inoculate...

Quantifying botanical composition is important for evaluating the effects of management on legume content and of legume content on pasture yield and quality. The standard for measuring botanical composition is hand separation of clipped samples. An alternative is taking point counts of botanical components on photographs of the pasture. The latter was tested on a rotationally stocked pasture, w...

Legume species promote productivity and increase the digestibility of herbage in grasslands. Considerable experimental data also indicate that communities with legumes produce more above-ground biomass than is expected from monocultures. While it has been attributed to N facilitation, evidence to identify the mechanisms involved is still lacking and the role of complementarity in soil water acq...