Intercropping of Cereals and Legumes for Increasing Quantity and Quality of Forage

Forage production is one of the most important limitations which affect livestock products in Iran. Cereals are widely used as forage bcause of their high dry matter production and low cost. However, cereals have low forage quality which needs to be compensated in animal’s diets. Cereals-legumes intercropping is a suitable approach for reaching this goal. Although legumes have low dry matter production, because of their high crude protein, their forage is in high quality compared to cereals. In intercropping systems, morphological and physiological differences between legumes and cereals lead to use of environmental resources that can result higher forage production. In this review paper, definition of forage and its quality indicators as well as factors affecting forage quality are discussed and also elements which are important in cereals-legumes intercropping systems will be explained. In general, for forage production it is better to intercrop cereals with legumes to produce forage with high quality (especially in terms of crude protein) and quantity.