Studies on Biomass Yield, Morphological Characteristics and Nutritive Quality of Napier Cultivars under Two Different Geo-Topographic Conditions of Bangladesh
The aim of the present study was to evaluate the performance
of Napier cultivars in terms of forage yield, plant morphology and nutrient
contents under two different agro-ecology and geo-topographic conditions. Three
Napier cultivars being conserved by Bangladesh Livestock Research Institute
(BLRI), namely-BLRI-Napier 1,
(BN-1), BLRI-Napier 3
(BN-3) and Merkeron (BN-5) were selected to cultivate in severe drought prone
areas (called Barind) and non-drought area at Savar (Modhupur terrace). Stem
cuttings were planted in rows apart from 70 cm and 35cm spacing between plants.
Data of 6 consecutive harvests from a period of approximately one year were
collected and analyzed statistically by “R” software. The results showed that
cultivar and location had a significant (P < 0.001) effect on biomass yield, plant height and
leaf-stem ratio (LSR), while number of tillers were significantly varied with
locations. BN-3 yielded the highest biomass (33.32 t/ha/harvest) at non-drought
location (42.98 t/ha/harvest). The highest plant height was obtained in BN-1
(171.2 cm) at non-drought location (174.6 cm). Number of tillers per hill ranged from 25.4
to 26.3 among cultivars (P > 0.05) and the highest tillers were found at
non-drought location (28.1 no). The best LSR was estimated from BN-5 (0.86) at
drought location (0.95). The proximate analysis showed that CP, ADF and NDF in
whole plant were varied significantly (P < 0.001), being the highest contents in BN-1
(10.69%, 46.20% and 54.58%, respectively). On the other hand, DM and ash
contents did not differ significantly (P > 0.05) among cultivars which
ranged from 15.80% to 17.13% and 13.10% to 14.58%, respectively. The highest CP
content in whole plant was obtained at non-drought location (11.89%), while the
lowest ash (10.57%) and NDF (52.71%) contents were obtained at the same
location. The highest CP contents in leaf were found at non-drought (15.03%)
and the lowest ash (9.86%) at the same location. The highest CP contents
(5.90%) in stem were found at non-drought location, while the
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