Mineral composition of legumes forages cultivated under different levels of shade

Abstract

The objective of this study was to evaluate the composition of calcium, phosphorus and potassium, and the leaf: stem ratio of four tropical forage legumes: Calopogonium mucunoides (calopo), Pueraria phaseoloides (puero), Macrotyloma axillare (archer) and Neonotonia wightii (perennial soybean), under different levels of artificial shade (0, 30, 50 and 70%) in the summer and autumn seasons of 2006 and 2007, respectively. The experimental design was a randomized complete block in factorial 4x4 design with four replications. Was used SNK test at 5% probability to evaluate the effect of the legume species and regression analysis to test the effect of the level of shading. There was a trend of increase in the concentration of 3 independent minerals examined the season. In contrast, there was a reduction in the leaf: stem ratio and a slight increase in specific leaf area archer, perennial soybean and puero (R2 ? 40%), which suggests small effect of shading on the morphology of leaves of 3 forage legumes, which in turn have little effect concentrating minerals, besides these finding is confirmed the annual calopo behavior, which prevents their use as legume forage for the autumn season.