Back to Contents

Pak. J. Bot., 45(SI): 401-408, 2013.

FREE FULL TEXT PDF

FORAGE YIELD AS AFFECTED BY COMMON VETCH IN DIFFERENT SEEDING RATIOS WITH WINTER CEREALS IN POTHOHAR REGION OF PAKISTAN

MUHAMMAD ANSAR^1*, MUHAMMAD ASAD MUKHTAR¹, RAO SABIR SATTAR¹, MUHAMMAD AZIM MALIK¹, GHULAM SHABBIR², AHMAD SHER¹ AND MUHAMMAD IRFAN¹

Abstract: In rainfed area of Pothwar, farmers and livestock producers have no option except to raise their animals on wheat straw and summer cereals stalk, which are poor in nutrients. In order to overcome the forage scarcity, two experiments were carried out during the year 2008-09 and 2010-11. In the first experiment, oat and vetch was grown in pure as well as in mix seeding ratio of 45:55, 30:70 and 15:85%. In the second experiment, the forage yield of common vetch and winter cereals: oat, wheat and barley in pure and in three different seeding ratios of 13:87, 25:75, 50:50 as well as in pure stands of vetch and cereals were studied to find out the best yielding seeding ratio. The vetch-oat seeding ratio of 30:70% ratio produced higher forage yield under rainfed condition while the vetch-cereal seeding ratio of 25:75 performed better in terms of green as well as dry matter production. The vetch-oat, vetch-barley and vetch-wheat in 25:75 seeding ratio resulted in 1.06, 1.04 and 1.10 LER values which indicated the advantage of vetch-cereal 25:75 seeding ratio over pure stand. Vetch-oat, vetch-barley and vetch-wheat in 25:75 seeding ratio resulted in 6.2%, 4.8% and 10.0% higher water use efficiency (WUE) and an average 16.3%, 16.8% and 23.9% higher photosynthetic active radiation (PAR) values than their respective pure stands, and produced 7, 4 and 5% higher green forage yield respectively, compared to their respective pure stand.

¹Department of Agronomy, PMAS-Arid Agriculture University Rawalpindi, Pakistan

²Department of Plant Breeding and Genetics, PMAS-Arid Agriculture University Rawalpindi, Pakistan

*Corresponding author: muhammad.ansar@uaar.edu.pk