Monday, November 5, 2007
65-5

Wheat Fall Forage Response to Pre-Plant Nitrogen Fertilizer.

Roji Manandhar and Jeff Edwards. Oklahoma State University, 368 Agricultural Hall, Stillwater, OK 74078

In the Southern Great Plains winter wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) is used as dual purpose grain crop and forage. Wheat pasture is considered as valuable source of high-quality forage during late fall or early spring, when there is no other good quality source of forage. Pre-plant nitrogen rate plays an important role for the growth and development of wheat forage. The cost of nitrogen fertilizer is increasing day by day, so if the farmer has good knowledge about the nitrogen rate for maximum yield of forage, he will be able to gain more with minimum fertility cost. We evaluated the wheat variety jagger forage response with pre-plant nitrogen fertilizer in 2004 and 2006 at Efaw, Stillwater, OK with six levels of pre-plant nitrogen fertilizer in a split-block design with four replications. . Our analysis shows a quadratic relationship between jagger forage and increasing rate of pre-plant nitrogen. When jagger forage yield was evaluated with days after planting, maximum forage yield was obtained from nitrogen rate of 120 kg/ha up to 80 days after planting, then after forage yield was decreased. From this we come to know that high rate of nitrogen is not always a good option to obtain high forage yield.