As an impact of climate change the yield of non-irrigated silage maize harvested in the summer is increasingly threatened. Annual precipitation amount shows a declining tendency and its distribution also becomes uneven and hectic. Therefore, we shall base our coarse fodder production on plant species with higher yield security. Winter cereals, especially triticale may excellently fulfil all requirements. The growing season of this species starts in September and ends in the beginning of May. During this period sufficient amount of water is available for the plants. By applying adequate agro-technical solutions and selecting the best varieties triticale can provide high yields together with outstanding quality. All examined triticale varieties provided high yields in 2017 accompanied by good content values. Examinations conducted on the quality of yields showed that the Dimenzio variety contained remarkably high crude protein content that significantly exceeded that of all the other triticale varieties. Taking into account the easily digestible fibre content NDFd48 Dimenzio and GK Maros performed extremely well with proportions above 77 percent. 2018 proved to be an arid year with low amount of precipitation. Average per hectare yields were ten tons less than in 2017. However, content values of the samples were still very good. 2019 has started with an arid autumn that had some negative effect. However, the largest yields were measured in this year reaching 42.14 t/ha for the Hungaro variety in the fourth mowing. Proportion of easily digestible fibre content proved to be considerably high in all three years of the examination. At the time of first mowing the value of dNDF48h was always above 70%. This can be interpreted as very good, since this value is measured only around 50 to 55 percent in case of silage maize. It is important to choose the appropriate variety. Based on our experiment results GK Maros, Hungaro and Dimenzio are suitable for coarse fodder production as well.

climate change, silage yield, biomass, triticale, fibre content

environmental engineering

Presentation: poster