Påverkar tidighetstyp fiberhalten hos rödklöver?

Sammanfattning: The high feeding value of red clover makes it into an important species in Swedish agriculture. There are three different maturity types grown in Sweden, early, medium late and late. The time for heading, regrowth and winter hardiness is affected by the maturity type, but there can also be other factors that are affected by the maturity type, for instance fiber content. In a greenhouse experiment three red clover varieties of different maturity types were compared; early Titus, middle late SW Nancy and late SW Torun. The features compared were fiber content and differences in development rates. The results indicate that the development rate of Titus was remarkably fast whereas the difference between SW Nancy and SW Torun was smaller. There was a large variation within each variety, which could be a result of low competition between plants. The fiber content correlated well with the leaf/stem-ratio, or the proportion of the plant that consisted of leaves. The leaf/stem-ratio decreased for all three varieties over time, but Titus had the lowest leaf/stem-ratio throughout the experiment because of its fast development rate. However, when the varieties were compared at the same developing stage, without any consideration of actual age, there were no differences in the leaf/stem-ratios between the varieties. The fiber content was highest in Titus throughout the experiment, whilst the difference between SW Nancy and SW Torun was small. When the three varieties were compared at the same leaf/stem-ratio, Titus had the highest fiber content, which indicates that maturity type may be affecting the fiber content.