Abstract
Cereals are high important in feeding ruminant animals for their high dry matter production and low cost. However, cereals forage is poor in protein content which shows their low quality and nutritive value. Regarding to high feed costs of protein supplementations, legumes can be used in livestock nutrition for their high protein content and, thus, providing cost saving. Since legumes have low dry matter yield, acceptable forage yield and quality can obtained from intercropping of cereals and legumes compared with their sole crops. In this paper, forage quality indicators and different factors affecting forage quality are discussed. Forage production and quality of different cereals-legumes intercropping are also reviewed, where; different legumes had different effect on forage quality when intercropped with specific cereal. Regarding to forage quality and quantity, different cereals also led to different production of forage. A number of factors which must be noticified in selecting cereal-legume intercropping compositions, especially for forage production, were considered.
Highlights
Forages are important in the world’s food resources as plant materials containing high amounts of structured carbohydrates
Yolcu et al (2009) evaluated forage yield and quality of barley intercropped with annual legumes in two years and found that crude protein yield in the 1st year was higher than those of 2nd year, which resulted by harmful effect of frost to dry matter production in the 2nd year
Because intercropping improves forage quality compared with cereals monoculture, and produces more dry matter compared with legumes sole crop
Summary
Forages are important in the world’s food resources as plant materials containing high amounts of structured carbohydrates. Berkenkamp and Meeres (1987) reported that protein content in the faba bean was on average 2.1 times that of wheat, the addition of faba bean as legume could be improve the quality of wheat forage, because wheat contains lower crude protein concentrations of 8.4-10.5%, and faba bean as whole crop has been shown to produce high concentration of crude protein of 17-18.5%. They found that CP yield, dry matter and ash content of maize forage increased by intercropping as compared with maize sole crop.
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