M. KARACHI

National Dryland Farming Research Station, Machakos, Kenya

Abstract

A field study was conducted on nodulation, time to flowering, dry matter production and forage nutritive value of 17 Lablab purpureus accessions collected from sites between 55 and 6974 m above sea level. There were significant variations in excisable nodulation (range 0–22 nodules/plant), dry matter (DM) yields of leaf (17.1–143.9 g/plant) and stem (15.2–161.2 g/plant) but not in days to first flowering (63–85 days).
The mean nitrogen concentration in leaf (4% DM) was twice that in stem (1.9%). Mean neutral detergent fibre (41.8%) and acid detergent fibre (29.6%) concentrations in leaf were 20 percentage units lower than that of stem, whereas the in vitro dry matter digestibility of the leaf (64.4%) was 20 percentage units higher than that of stem. There was little variation in the level of acid detergent lignin between leaf and stem. The concentrations of soluble phenolics and insoluble proanthocyanidins were also slightly higher in leaf than in stem.
Overall, Accessions 1042, 1089, 1067, 1045 and 1071 were consistently higher yielding, irrespective of the available moisture. They have potential for use as a feed supplement in semi-arid parts of Kenya.