Triple Cropping Systems of Spring Maize, Tropical Grass of Teff (<i>Eragrostis tef</i>) and Winter Cereal Crops to Combine Total Digestible Nutrient Yield with Protein Concentration in Southern Kyushu, Japan

Abstract

It is ordinarily common for forage production in southern Kyushu to adopt a double cropping system, composed of summer forage crops (e.g. maize and sorghum) cultivated from late March to early September, and winter grass crops (e.g. Italian ryegrass (IR) and oat) from mid-October to the following May. However, if high total digestible nutrient (TDN) production is aimed to introduce winter cereal crops (e.g. wheat and barley) as a replacement of IR, it is necessary to cultivate tropical grass, which has a rapid-growth potential with high crude protein (CP) concentration in a switching period between summer and winter crops. In this study, teff ( Eragrostis tef ) was tried to evaluate as a candidate crop in the switching period. Yield and quality of two types of triple forage cropping system were determined under maize-teff-barley and maize-teff-wheat in the first and second year, respectively. Compared with the normal year, summer temperature was higher and summer and winter precipitations were lower in the first year, while no climatic disorder was observed in the second year. Even though dry matter yield of teff was minimal in the present system due to weed damage, CP concentration was the highest among crops and TDN yields of the present cropping system tended to be higher in the second year with no drought stress than in the conventional maize-IR system in the region.