ANBAR JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL SCIENCES

Abstract

A field trial was carried out on the city center of Al-Ramida during 2010 in field fallow to one of grower. The main objective was to find out the effect of cutting stages and sowing dates on forage yield and quality of sorghum. The layout of the experiment was a split plot in randomized complete block design with three replications , sowing date (15march, 1 and 15 April) were taken as main plots while , cutting stages (vegetative stage , 50% flowering and soft dough stage) were taken as the sub plots Results showed that sowing date of (1 April) gave higher plant height 198.28 cm , green forage yield 47.45 t.ha -1 , dry matter 12.84 t.ha -1 , yield of protein 1.42 t.ha -1 , yield of fiber 6.00 t.ha-1 and percentage of crude protein 12.38%. Cutting plants at soft dough stage gave higher of each of plant height 222.56 cm , green forage 41.96 t. ha -1 dry matter percentage 31.45% , dry matter 13.16 t.ha -1 , yield of protein 1.23 t.ha-1 , yield of fibers 6.71 t.ha-1 and percentage of crude fibers 51.53 % . There was a significant interaction between sowing dates and cutting stage for all characters.