Norberto Silva Rocha

Clitoria ternatea L. as a Potential High Quality Forage Legume

Samples of Clitoria ternatea L. (Cunhã) were harvested at 35, 50, 70, and 90 d after a uniformity harvest in a field study designed as a completely randomized design with a total of 18 experimental plots. The dry matter yield of the whole plant was separated quantitatively into leaves, stems, and pods at each harvesting age. Chemical analyses and in vitro gas production kinetics were performed to assess the quality of the plant parts. Yields, chemical composition, and estimates of gas production parameters were analyzed by fitting a mixed statistical model with two types of covariance structures as follows: variance components and an unrestricted structure with heterogeneous variances. Fast and slow gas yielding pools were detected for both leaves and stems, but only a single pool was detected for pods. The homoscedasticity assumption was more likely for all variables, except for some parameters of the gas production kinetics of leaves and stems. There was no presence of typical pods at 35 and 50 d. In the leaves, the fibrous fractions were affected, whereas the non-fibrous fractions were unaffected by the harvesting age. The harvesting age affected the majority of the chemical constituents and gas kinetic parameters related to the stems. The leaves of this legume were the least affected part by the aging process.

Produção de matéria seca e composição químico-bromatológica do feno de três leguminosas forrageiras tropicais em dois sistemas de cultivo

The experiment was conducted in the forage crops and pastures section of DNAP/IZ/UFRRJ, Seropedica, Rio de Janeiro, to evaluate the dry matter production (DMP) and chemical composition of three tropical forage legumes: puero (Pueraria phaseoloides), archer (Macrotyloma axillare) and perennial soybean (Neonotonia wightii) in two cultivate systems (CS) (supported and free). A randomized block design, in a factorial arrangement was used: (3 species X 2 (CS) X 4 (Repetition), in plots measuring 20m2. DMP was significantly different (P 0.05) for the values regarding CP and ADF of the legumes in each cultivate system. For the values of NDF there was significant difference (P<0.05) among the studied species, and the species that presented larger values was the puero followed by the perennial soybean and the archer. There was significance (P<0,05) of mineral matter from the interaction between legume and cultivation system. The greater value observed in supported system was that of puero, that was different of other species. However, free system showed the highest value to perennial soybean, which was the same to puero but different of archer.

Simulation of diets for dairy goats and growing doelings using nonlinear optimization procedures

The objective of this study was to simulate total dry matter intake and cost of diets optimized by nonlinear programming to meet the nutritional requirements of dairy does and growing doelings. The mathematical model was programmed in a Microsoft Excel(r) spreadsheet. Increasing values of body mass and average daily weight gain for growing doelings and increasing body mass values and milk yield for dairy does were used as inputs for optimizations. Three objective functions were considered: minimization of the dietary cost, dry matter intake maximization, and maximization of the efficiency of use of the ingested crude protein. To solve the proposed problems we used the Excel(r) Solver(r) algorithm. The Excel(r) Solver(r) was able to balance diets containing different objective functions and provided different spaces of feasible solutions. The best solutions are obtained by least-cost formulations; the other two objective functions, namely maximize dry matter intake and maximize crude protein use, do not produce favorable diets in terms of costs.