Findings, implications and lessons learned

From a biological point of view the case study demonstrates how important it is not only to establish how well a Napier grass accession grows but also to determine how well animals perform when fed the accession. The following table shows the results for Study C. The reader can verify the results for average daily gain by analysing the values stored in CS5Data3.

Considerable variation occurred both in dry matter yield and nutritive value of accessions. The table shows how it is necessary to consider both variables when selecting accessions for promotion with farmers. Accession 14984 had both a high dry matter yield and a good nutritive quality that resulted in good growth rates when fed to sheep. However, as mentioned earlier, the lambs were slow to adjust to the Napier grass feed and this may have affected the overall conclusions that can be drawn.