Variation and covariation of silage maize digestibility estimated from digestion trials with sheep

Summary

Variation and covariation for agronomic and digestibility traits of silage maize are reported from a compilation of 22 years of experiments with standard sheep. Genotype effects of DOM and DCF were highly significant, even when genotypes were nested in earliness groups or brown-midrib hybrids discarded (Table 2). The genetic variance of crude fiber content was low, but the variance of the DCF was high. The genetic variance of DOM was about 4 times lower than genetic variance of DCF, but broad sense heritability of DOM was higher because of lower residual variance (Table 3). Genetic correlations between grain or crude fiber content and DOM had similar absolute values, 0.65, so each of these two traits was an important but not the unique determinant of silage maize quality. There was no correlation between DCF and grain or crude fiber content. Yield was not related to DOM or DCF within each group of earliness, allowing some quality improvement without agronomic drift (Table 4). Except for late hybrids, most of DOM differences between groups of earliness came from lowering of minimum value, while maximum values were similar. It was the contrary for DCF, with similar minimum values for all groups (Table 5). There was no obvious correlation between year of registration of hybrids and DOM or DCF, but extra new variation seemed obtained only for low values (Figs 1, 2; Table 6). IVDOM according to the APC process was a poor predictor of DOM, especially when brown-midrib hybrids and earliness effects were discarded; but because heritability of this trait was similar to DOM heritability, such enzymatic processes could probably be used to avoid drift towards poor DOM with hybrids bred for higher stalk strength.