Abstract

ALVAREZ VAZQUEZ, Perpetuo et al. Productive response of bird’s foot clover as a function of the percentage of light intercepted. Rev. Mex. Cienc. Agríc [online]. 2020, vol.11, n.spe24, pp.105-116.  Epub May 07, 2021. ISSN 2007-0934.  https://doi.org/10.29312/remexca.v0i24.2362.

The productivity of a forage species can be described in terms of the behavior of its morphological components and the combination with the entity in the grassland. The objective was to evaluate the productive behavior of bird’s foot clover (L. corniculatus), under different defoliation strategies. The experiment was carried out at the Postgraduate College, from September 2015 to September 2016, in a randomized block design, with three repetitions, with the hypothesis that when harvesting the species at 95% intercepted light (IL); it has a better productive behavior. A fixed cutoff interval (FC) had lower production in winter (3 441 kg DM ha-1), summer (5 024 kg DM ha-1) and accumulated annual (20 710 kg DM ha-1), compared to the rest of the treatments (26 689 kg DM ha-1, annual average). Also, it showed lower plant height (21 vs 26 cm, average in the IL). However, the FC had a higher leaf: stem ratio, both seasonal and annual average (2.3 vs 1.5 average in the IL). The highest seasonal values were recorded in autumn and winter (1.9). In spring and summer, the highest heights were presented with 29 cm vs. winter with 19 cm. The leaf contributed 51% to the annual yield, followed by the stem, weeds and dead material with 32, 10 and 6%, respectively. In conclusion, the best productive performance of bird’s foot clover, genotype 260012, was presented in the IL harvest strategies with respect to the FC.

Keywords : botanical and morphological composition; harvest intervals; forage production.