Seasonal variation of the productivity and quality of permanent pastures in adisols of temperate regions

Abstract

With the aim of evaluating the productivity (dry matter yield) and quality (protein and fiber) of pastures in temperate regions of Chile a long-term monitoring experiment was carried out in a representative farm in these regions. The study was carried during the years 2002 - 2012 in a farm located at Region of Los Ríos, Chile. The study area was split into fifteen pasture sites, which were evaluated dry matter production by means of the standardized methodology, which considers the location on each pasture site a grazing exclusion cage. With the information generated during the 11 years of measurements, a trend pattern interpolation was developed by a polynomial regression model using fifth grade and centering the independent variable from the second grade on. Each result was classified according to the ranking provided by the BLUP methodology, comparing the results obtained with the average. The analysis of variance mixed model, determined by the variance components, indicated that 60% of the total variation in dry matter production is attributed to seasonality. Only 2.6% of the variation was attributable to the year while a 0.9% was due to differences between pastures sites, during the eleven years of study, with no significant data (p> 0.05). The seasonal distribution of production, concentrated its performance in spring and highest performing months were November, December, January. The quality measured as protein and fiber content of the pasture, does not present statistical differences between years and only differences were determined by seasonality.