Características estruturais de cultivares de brachiaria brizantha diferidas

Abstract

Pasture deferment is one of the management strategies adopted to reduce the effect of seasonality of forage production during the year, so in the dry season, when forage production deficit occurs, deferment seeks to minimize the negative forage balance during the year. period of low rainfall. With this, the objective of this work was to evaluate the structural characteristics of Brachiaria brizantha cultivars after the deferment period. The work was carried out at the Capim Branco experimental farm, in the Forage Sector of the Federal University of Uberlândia. The experiment was contucted in a complete randomized design with three replicates. The four cultivars of Brachiaria brizantha were evaluated: marandu, xaraés, piatã and paiaguás. The height and forage mass were higher in the canopy of Xaraés grass when compared to the other cultivars. In relation to the percentage of live leaf and dead leaf in the forage mass, there were no differences among the cultivars. The highest percentage of live stalk occurred in Brachiaria brizantha cv. Xaraés. The percentage of dead stalk was higher in the Paiaguás, Marandu and Piatã grasslands than in the xaraés grass. The Xaraés and Marandu grasses had a higher number of reproductive profiles. The number of vegetative tiller was higher in paiaguás grass than in the others. Compared to cultivars Piatã, Marandu and Xaraés, Brachiaria brizantha cv. Paiaguás presents better structural characteristics after the end of the deferment period, being thus the forage with better nutritive value, but with lower mass of total forage. Among the tested cultivars, all can be used for the deferral obtaining good gains, but for this it is necessary the genetic, physiological and technical knowledge of each cultivar for the correct choice in each production system.