Location: Livestock, Forage and Pasture Management Research Unit
Project Number: 3070-21500-001-002-R
Project Type: Reimbursable Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Sep 1, 2019
End Date: Aug 31, 2024
Objective:
Identify, design, and evaluate novel pathways to greater water productivity and nutrient efficiency through intensification/diversification of existing and novel crop and livestock systems. In the short term novel integrated systems will be evaluated under research conditions with the long-term objective of integrating diverse crops into production agriculture.
Approach:
The objective will be achieved by employing a data-modeling approach to study how to 1) incorporate cover crops with summer annuals; and 2) extend forage production and the grazing season by coupling novel summer forage species, and grasses in rotation with dual-purpose winter wheat production.
Specific tasks include: (1) Test of a suite of novel annual grain species for effective forage materials for the SGP; (2) Responses of effective novel forages to management inputs such as fertilizers and water; and (3) Evaluate forage quality and avidity of stocker cattle to effective novel forages.
