HOW DOES THE ALFALFA SEEDING RATE INFLUENCE THE STAND DENSITY AND PRODUCTIVITY?
Keywords:
alfalfa cultivars, dry matter yield, plant and stem density, seeding rate.Abstract
Optimizing the seeding rate could lead to a good stand establishment and cost-effective alfalfa production. To achieve high forage yields, alfalfa producers commonly use seeding rates above 20 kg/ha. Unfortunately, a scientific contribution to analyzing some agro-technical measures, including the appropriate seeding rate of alfalfa in temperate conditions in the Republic of North Macedonia, has been missing in the last decades. Given the dramatic ongoing climate changes, there was an urge to assess the productivity responses of several alfalfa cultivars to different seeding rates. In order to examine the effect of two seeding rates (8 and 16 kg/ha) on the stand density and dry matter yield of four alfalfa cultivars, from which one domestic (Debarska) and three imported (Banat VS, NS Jelena, Nijagara), a field experiment was conducted over three successive years (2023-2025). The treatments were distributed according to a randomized complete block design with three repetitions. Even though the higher seeding rate of 16 kg/ha resulted in significantly higher average number of plants (134) and stems (367) per m2 in comparison with the lower seeding rate of 8 kg/ha, it obtained a lower average dry matter yield (20.9 t/ha) due to intraspecific competition of plants which cause plant mortality and productivity decrease. Among the examined cultivars, the highest productivity was recorded with NS Jelena (22.5 t/ha), confirming its genetic potential for intensive cultivation and high drought tolerance.
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