Mineral composition of legumes forages cultivated under different levels of shade

Abstract

The objective of this study was to evaluate the composition of calcium, phosphorus and potassium, and the leaf: stem ratio of four tropical forage legumes: Calopogonium mucunoides (calopo), Pueraria phaseoloides (puero), Macrotyloma axillare (archer) and Neonotonia wightii (perennial soybean), under different levels of artificial shade (0, 30, 50 and 70%) in the summer and autumn seasons of 2006 and 2007, respectively. The experimental design was a randomized complete block in factorial 4x4 design with four replications. Was used SNK test at 5% probability to evaluate the effect of the legume species and regression analysis to test the effect of the level of shading. There was a trend of increase in the concentration of 3 independent minerals examined the season. In contrast, there was a reduction in the leaf: stem ratio and a slight increase in specific leaf area archer, perennial soybean and puero (R2 ? 40%), which suggests small effect of shading on the morphology of leaves of 3 forage legumes, which in turn have little effect concentrating minerals, besides these finding is confirmed the annual calopo behavior, which prevents their use as legume forage for the autumn season.

Keywords

• Calopogonium mucunoides
• Macrotyloma axillare; Neonotonia wightii Pueraria Phaseoloides