Fodder Yield and Quality of Fodder Maize Under Maize + Cowpea Mixed Cropping at Different Nitrogen Levels

摘要

The present fodder production is inadequate to feed 505 million livestock population of the country. The land utilized for growing green fodders hardly exceeds 5% of the net cultivated area in our country. As the horizontal expansion of fodder cultivation is a meagre possibility, the fodder yield should be increased per unit area by cultivating high yielding and high quality fodder crops suitable for a particular agro-climatic region. Mixed cultivation of a cereal (maize) and legume (cowpea) fodder crop is one of the best ways to improve the productivity per unit area (Ramanakumar and Bhanumurthy 2001). Nitrogen being a major constituent of chlorophvll molecule, plays a positive role in increasing the photosynthetic activity and ultimately reflectsin the yield and accelerates the meristematic activity, encourages the vegetative growth in fodder crops (Krishna et al., 1998).