Boryana Churkova and Katerina Churkova
Agricultural Academy, Research Institute of Mountain Stockbreeding and Agriculture, 5600 Troyan, Bulgaria
Churkova, B. & Churkova, K. (2022). Chemical composition of bird’s foot trefoil cultivars grown in mountain conditions. Bulg. J. Agric. Sci., 28 (6), 1027–1033
Chemical analysis on fodder of bird’s foot trefoil cultivars was conducted: Targovishte 1, Alvena (Italy), Lotanova (Italy), Frilo (Italy), Polom (Slovakia), Bonnie (France), Bull (Canada), grown in mountain conditions in the period 2016-2019. The indicators, such as crude proteins, crude fats, crude fiber, crude ash were observed and the correlation dependences between them were calculated, such as yield and morphological composition of the grassland. After their statistical processing and comparative evaluation, the variability of the indicators over the years was established.
Bull cultivar stood out as the most promising in terms of the amount of crude protein for use in selection programs and for implementation in production in mountain conditions, and Bonnie cultivar in terms of crude fiber and the amount of minerals. Fats registered maximum values for Frilo cultivar. The indicators of crude protein, crude fiber and crude ash showed a very low degree of variability, while for the indicator of fat it was low.
The established strong positive correlation between the content of crude protein and the percentage of bird’s foot trefoil in grassland (r = 0.8516) on the one hand, and the content of crude fiber and crude protein (r = 7851) on the other hand, showed the interdependence between the indicators. This determines the benefits of growing these cultivars in mountain conditions and their significance for animal feeding.