Indication
Recommended for medium to low fertility soils, sandy, acidic, and with excess moisture. Recommended for breeding and rearing cattle, as well as for horses, goats, and sheep. It has good tolerance to pasture spittlebugs. A rustic and persistent variety, with ease of propagation due to its stoloniferous nature.
Urochloa humidicola cv. Llanero
Brachiaria humidícula cv. Llanero
Low fertility, tolerates acidity, sandy soils, and with drainage issues (temporary moisture)
Direct grazing or haymaking
8 to 10 tons/ha/year of dry matter (DM)
4 to 7%
Up to 1.0m
Good
Good
Good
Tolerant
Medium
Perennial
Use and Management
Dictyoneura is a cultivar recommended for properties with low fertility soils, acidity issues, or poor moisture drainage. Despite its lower quality forage (4-7% CP), it can be used for feeding demanding animals such as horses, supplemented with adequate mineral supplementation. It is used for cattle mainly in the breeding and rearing phases. In pastures associated with Arachis pintoi, live weight gains per animal per year ranged from 124 to 183 kg, and gains per hectare varied from 267 to 540 kg of live weight. In the initial development of this pasture, similar to humidicola, the first grazing should be done gently to stimulate tillering and stolon rooting. Dictyoneura suffers from the same problem as humidicola and loses nutritional quality more quickly than other Brachiaria if allowed to mature. It is recommended to use high stocking rates or more frequent grazing, as this way animals graze on tenderer and better nutritional quality forage with better digestibility.
Origin
The cultivar was commercially released in Colombia by the ICA (Colombian Agricultural Institute) in 1987. The seeds (CPI 59610) came from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) in Australia, which was introduced by CIAT in 1978 under number CIAT 6133. Known as dictyoneura, it was originally collected in Zimbabwe (formerly Zambia) in 1971. It is currently marketed throughout Brazil and Latin America.
Morphological Characteristics
A perennial grass, semi-erect to prostrate, stoloniferous and rhizomatous, 40 to 90 cm tall, with long purple stolons with white hairs, lanceolate leaves 4 to 6 cm long and 0.8 cm wide, superficial adventitious roots. The leaves are linear-lanceolate, erect, glabrous, purple in color, with one denticulated edge. The stems and leaf veins are green with purple spots. The inflorescence is a panicle with three or four racemes 4 to 6 cm long, each with 10 to 22 alternate spikelets, on a zigzag-shaped purple-green rachis
Agronomic Characteristics
It has the same characteristics as humidicola, tolerating low fertility, acidic soils, but it does not tolerate the same amount of water in the soil. It is also a host of spittlebugs and does not show symptoms of their attack. The seeds also exhibit dormancy, but to a lesser extent, as they are harvested from the soil using the sweeping method. The seeds of this cultivar have dormancy, even up to a year after being harvested. It is recommended to expose the seeds for at least a whole day, spread out in full sunlight on a black tarp or a clean courtyard, stirring every hour with feet, so that the heating is uniform. This heating of the seed, which can reach up to 50°C, helps break dormancy. Dormancy can cause problems during pasture establishment because as the seed takes a long time to germinate (even under normal conditions of temperature, light, and humidity), weed seeds and native vegetation germinate first and 'dominate' the planting area. This causes shading of the soil which no longer receives light and becomes cold, further affecting the germination of dictyoneura seeds. If this occurs, the area should be mowed. The recommendation to avoid this problem, in addition to heating dictyoneura seeds, is to sow it associated, with 15% of the normal dosage, with ruziziensis or another Brachiaria. Another option is to mix it with 5 kg/ha (maximum) of millet seeds. This cultivar can be intercropped with Pueraria phaseoloides, Macrotyloma axillare (Java), and Arachis pintoi.
