In order to investigate the effects of soil salinity, plant density, and planting date on quantitative and qualitative yield of mustard forage, an experiment was conducted in 2016 at Gorgan Nemoone Farm Research Station as a split-split plot in a randomized complete blo
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In order to investigate the effects of soil salinity, plant density, and planting date on quantitative and qualitative yield of mustard forage, an experiment was conducted in 2016 at Gorgan Nemoone Farm Research Station as a split-split plot in a randomized complete block design with three replications. The main factor of soil salinity (2 and 10 dS/m), sub-factor of planting date (6 November, 21 November, 6 December, 21 December, and 5 January), and sub sub-factor of plant density at three levels (208000, 277000, and 416000 plants per hectare) were considered. Results showed the interactions of environment × planting date on all studied traits including fresh weight, dry weight, percentage of leaf protein, percentage of stem protein, percentage of pod protein, percentage of total protein, protein yield, percentage of leaf fibers, percentage of stem fibers, percentage of pod fibers, percentage of total fibers, fiber yield, and leaf proline concentration were significant. The interaction effect of environment × planting density was also significant on all characteristics under study except for leaf protein percentage and leaf proline concentration. Moreover, the interaction effect of planting date and planting density was significant on all characteristics under study except for stem protein percentage and leaf proline concentration. Generally, it is concluded that the cultivation of forage mustard on November 6 and with planting density of 208,000 plants per hectare produces the highest fresh and dry weight of forage and protein yield, as well as the lowest amount of fiber.
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