Grass pea (Lathyrus sativus L.) -Cereal Intercropping: Evaluation of Productivity and Some Indices of Forage Quality

This study was conducted to evaluate the quantity and quality of forage and to determine the best cultivation pattern of Grass Pea mixed with some winter cereals including barley, oats and triticale.

The experiment was conducted as randomized complete design with 13 treatments and three replications in the research farm of Faculty of Agriculture, University of Tabriz, Iran. Treatments included mono cropping of grass pea, barley, oat and triticale, and mixed grasspea cultivation with each cereal in three seeding ratios (grain: grass pea; 25: 100, 50: 100, and 500:80).

The LER based mixing system productivity and forage quality indexes such as crude protein (CP), neutral detergent fiber (NDF) and acidic fiber (ADF) content, total forage digestibility (TDN) and other qualitative traits were affected by the type of mixed culture. As such, most of these qualitative traits belonged to sole culture of grass pea. Increasing the proportion of grass pea in mixture intercrops improved forage quality.

Among of mixed treatments, two mixing patterns including 80% barley + 50% grass pea and 80% oats + 50% grass pea, had the highest quantity and quality of forage. Also, these cropping patterns showed the highest LER (1.34 and 1.40, respectively) compared to pure and other mixed cropping treatments. Therefore, based on the results of this study, it can be concluded that the mixing of grass pea with winter cereals at the 80% cereal + 50% legume as one of the most efficient and sustainable cropping systems in terms of high quality and quantity forage production, Advised farmers in arid and semi-arid regions.