In vitro Digestibility of Whole Forage Re-Shoots from Two New Sugar Cane Cultivars (Saccharum spp. C97-366 and C99-374).

Abstract

In vitro digestibility of two new sugar cane cultivars for animal forage was determined. Three runs were made using gas from cattle feces as inoculum. The plant's integral fraction was studied at 6, 8, and 11 months of re-shoot. Forage cultivar My5514 was used as witness. The Ørskov and McDonald´s model (1979), transformed by Correa (2004), was used to determine the parameters. Simple variance analyses were carried out, and the differences between the means for P < 0.05, were determined by Tukey. The results showed that the two new cultivars produced similar in vitro gas volumes, and even higher (8 and 11 months of age) than the My5514 forage cultivar. At 8 months, the new cultivars had the best in vitro gas production values. The values achieved for the in vitro gas production, speed (0.011 h -1-0.033h -1), and gas production potential (32.7 ml-52.1 ml), were high. Moreover, the lag had low values (2.10 h-4.57 h).

Keywords

• sugar cane
• cultivars
• in vitro gas
• re-shoot age
• forage