Making silage from high sugar grasses

摘要

High sugar grass varieties have been shown to increase feed efficiency under grazing conditions but can they still deliver a benefit as conserved forage? Angela Rhodes reports on the latest IGER research on high sugar grass silage. The water soluble carbohydrate content of grass is well recognised as a key factor in determining how efficiently ruminants can turn the nitrogen in their diets into microbial protein for milk and meat production. And it has been this potential to improve nitrogen utilisation that has provided the impetus over the last decade for IGER's plant breeders to develop higher sugar grass varieties Their work so far has produced a clutch of varieties which have been shown in grazing trials to improve feed intake and increase theefficiency of nitrogen conversion,. These improvements in efficiency of nitrogen utilisation are largely due to an increase in the amount of water soluble carbohydrates (WSC) available as an energy source to the rumen bacteria responsible for convertingdietary nitrogen into microbial protein.