10.57647/j.jrs.2025.1503.23

Herbage yield and quality of five native species of Milkvetch (Astragalus spp.) under rain-fed conditions in Iran

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  • Sedigheh Zarekia*1,
  • Niloofar Zare2,
  • Ali Ashraf Jafari2,
  • Amir Ghorbankhani2,
  • Samira Hossein Jafari3,
  1. Forest and Rangeland Research Division, Yazd Agricultural and Natural Resources Research and Education Center, Agricultural Research, Education and Extension Organization (AREEO), Yazd, Iran
  2. Research Institute of Forest and Rangeland, Agricultural Research, Education and Extension Organization (AREEO), Tehran, Iran
  3. Department of Nature Engineering and Medicinal Plants, Faculty of Agriculture and Natural Resources, University of Torbat Heydarieh, Khorasan Razavi, Iran

Received: 2023-12-15

Revised: 2024-04-06

Accepted: 2024-08-22

Published in Issue 2025-07-20

Copyright (c) 2025 Sedigheh Zarekia, Niloofar Zare, Ali Ashraf Jafari, Amir Ghorbankhani, Samira Hossein Jafari (Author)

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

How to Cite

Zarekia, S., Zare, N., Ashraf Jafari, A., Ghorbankhani, A., & Hossein Jafari, S. (2025). Herbage yield and quality of five native species of Milkvetch (Astragalus spp.) under rain-fed conditions in Iran. Journal of Rangeland Science, 15(3). https://doi.org/10.57647/j.jrs.2025.1503.23
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Abstract

The role of different species of Astragalus in soil erosion prevention, genetic storage, species diversity, improving of soil fertility by fixing atmospheric nitrogen, and finally, the production of good quality forage is of great importance. This research aimed to investigate the quality and quantity of five herbaceous milkvetch species (Astragalus brevidens Freyn & Sint., Astragalus vegetus Bunge, Astragalus cyclophyllon Beck, Astragalus effusus Bunge, and Astragalus brachyodontus Boiss.) under rain-fed conditions in Damavand, Iran. The seeds of each species were collected from their natural habitats and sown in the field using a completely randomized block design with three replications in 2017. Data were collected for Dry Matter (DM) yield, canopy cover, plant height, stem number, and seed yield at the seeding stage in 2019. For quality traits, forage samples were taken in three phenological stages (vegetative, flowering, and seeding) in 2020, and the traits of Crude Protein (CP), Dry Matter Digestibility (DMD), Water-Soluble Carbohydrates (WSC), Crude Fiber (CF), acid Detergent Fiber (ADF), Neutral Detergent Fiber (NDF), total Ash, and Metabolisable Energy (ME) were estimated using Near Infrared Spectroscopy (NIR). The results showed that there was no significant difference among the species for DM yield, but the higher and lower values (2233 and 1853 kg/ha) were obtained in A. effusus and A. cyclophyllon, respectively. For morphological traits, there were significant differences among the species, and the higher values of canopy cover area (7050 cm2), plant height (70 cm), stem number (38.33/plant), and seed yield (411 kg/ha) were obtained in A. vegetus, A. brevidens, A. effusus, and A. brevidens, respectively. Also, our findings indicate that the amount of CP, DMD, WSC, Ash, and ME was higher in the vegetative and flowering stages than that in the seeding stage. The total mean of all the studied species with values of 15.76% and 12.16% for CP, 66.11 and 63.64 for DMD, and 9.24 and 8.81 for ME were obtained in the vegetative and flowering stages, respectively, which classify them as desirable forage species. Additionally, all the studied species are suitable for grazing by livestock in both growth stages from spring up to the middle summer seasons. Based on the findings, milkvetch has the attributes of a desirable forage species. It was concluded that A. effusus and A. cyclophyllon were the superior species for both yield and quality traits among the studied species.

Keywords

  • Nutritional value,
  • Forage,
  • Semi steppe rangelands,
  • Phenological stage,
  • Milkvetch
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