Low-Lignin Alfalfa Evaluated in the Black Soil Zone
Bibliographic record
Abstract
A small-plot study was conducted at Lanigan (lat 51°51´N, long 105°02´W) SK, in the Black soil zone, to compare low-lignin Hi-Gest®360 alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.) to a conventional alfalfa (AC Grazeland, check cultivar). Each cultivar was seeded in August 2017 as both a monoculture and binary mixture (binary) with AC Success hybrid bromegrass (HB). Plants were sampled in 2019 at 3 different maturity stages of alfalfa (1 = 10% bloom; 2 = 40% bloom or commercial harvest stage; and 3 = 100% bloom). Forage was harvested 27 June, and 8 and 29 July, 2019 for stage 1, stage 2 (11 d after stage 1), and stage 3 (21 d after stage 2), respectively. Treatments were replicated 4 times, a total of 48 plots with plot size of 6.2 — 1.2 m. Forage — maturity stage interaction was not observed (P > 0.05) for all measured parameters. AC Grazeland and Hi-Gest exhibited similar (P > 0.05) DMY (2978 ± 405 kg/ha). Likewise, AC Grazeland+HB and Hi-Gest+HB did not vary (P = 0.62; 9120 ± 647 kg /ha) in DMY. There was little difference between Hi-Gest and AC Grazeland (P > 0.05) in nutrient profile. As alfalfa maturity advanced, DMY increased (P < 0.05; 1940, 2970, 4023 kg/ha for stages 1, 2, and 3, respectively). Hi-Gest at stage 3 tended to be greater (P = 0.09; by 35.4%) in DMY than AC Grazeland at stage 2 (4235 kg/ha vs. 3127 kg/ha). In binary system, forages at stage 1 had lower (P < 0.05) DMY (6575 kg/ha) than those at stage 2 (9858 kg/ha) and stage 3 (10650 kg/ha), whereas, forages in stage 2 and stage 3 did not differ (P = 0.12) in DMY. However, in monoculture, forages at maturity stage 3 had lower crude protein (CP; 20.0 vs. 23.1%) and total digestible nutrients (TDN; 60.8 vs. 65.5%), but greater acid detergent fiber (ADF; 36.1 vs. 30.0%) than those at maturity stage 1. The acid detergent lignin (ADL) concentrations of Hi-Gest were 98.8%, 86.7%, and 99.2% (avg. 94.9%) of AC Grazeland alfalfa, for stage 1, stage 2, and stage 3, respectively. No differences (P > 0.05) were observed between AC Grazeland+HB and Hi-Gest+HB for nutrient profiles. The ADL concentration of Hi-Gest + HB was 106.3%, 93.7%, and 90.9% of (avg. 96.7%) AC Grazeland+HB, for the stage 1, stage 2, and stage 3, respectively. Hi-Gest alfalfa had greater (P < 0.05) effective degradable dry matter (EDDM; 7.2% more; 520 vs. 485 g/kg DM), effective degradable CP (EDCP; 14.3% more; 630 vs. 551 g/kg CP), and effective degradable neutral detergent fiber (EDNDF; 6.2% more; 265 vs. 249 g/kg NDF) relative to AC Grazeland alfalfa. In binary system, Hi-Gest+HB had numerically (P > 0.05) greater EDCP (8.2% more; 370 vs. 342 g/kg CP), but had similar EDDM (388.4 g/kg DM) and EDNDF (250 g/ kg NDF) relative to AC Grazeland+HB. In both mono- and binary systems, as the maturity advanced, EDDM, EDCP, and EDNDF declined (P < 0.05). The study further revealed that each percentage unit increase in ADL concentration, the main factor hindering cell wall digestion, decreased EDNDF by 2.1 percentage units (EDNDF, g/kg NDF = 252.54 “ 20.792 — ADL, % DM, r2 = 0.41, n = 48, P < 0.01). The stand establishment costs varied by treatment and were $458.70/ha ($185.60/ac), $233.44/ha ($94.47/ac), $351.50/ha ($142.25/ac), and $464.20/ha ($198.10/ac) for Hi-Gest, Grazeland, Grazeland+HB, and Hi-Gest+HB, respectively. The market value ranked from highest to lowest was AC Grazeland+HB > Hi-Gest+HB > Hi-Gest > AC Grazeland. Compared to conventional alfalfa (AC Grazeland) that was harvested at the commercial harvest stage (stage 2; 40% bloom), Hi-Gest alfalfa harvested at stage 3 (100% bloom) had $169.23/ha and $143.57/ha greater market value in mono- and binary system, respectively. Preliminary results suggest that Hi-Gest alfalfa (in both monoculture and binary systems) did not differ in DMY and nutrient profiles, but was greater in rumen degradation potential relative to AC Grazeland, suggesting Hi-Gest 360 alfalfa is a viable alternative legume in both monoculture and binary systems for the Black soil zone of Saskatchewan.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.018 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".