CORN SILAGE QUALITY RESPONSE TO CROP PLANTING DENSITY

Corn silage serves as high-energy forage for livestock. This is most important for high-producing livestock and on farms experiencing problems with making or buying high quality forage. A field experiment was conducted in the spring and summer of 2010 at the Research Site of Guilan Province Agricultural and Natural Resources Research Center in Rasht, Iran to evaluate effect of different planting density of corn in terms of silage nutritive quality. The plant densities were 90,000, 110,000 and 130,000 plants/ha. Increasing plant density from 90,000 to 130,000 plants ha-1 resulted in decreasing nutritive quality of silage corn. The dry matter digestibility (DMD) and crude protein (CP) declined from the lowest to the highest plant density. Acid detergent fiber (ADF) increased from the lowest to the highest plant density. The reduction in nutritive quality may be attributed to the lower leaf to stem ratio at higher planting density. With the reduced grain yield, plant population above a critical density will have a negative effect on CP and quality of forage corn.