Yield and nutritive quality of nine Napier grass varieties in Malaysia

Napier grass was first introduced in Malaysia in the 1920’s from East Africa and is currently the most popular fodder grass in dairy and feedlot production systems. Nine varieties of Napier grass were grown in a randomized complete block design with five replications to characterize and compare their growth, agronomic performance and nutritive quality. Based on the data obtained, six of the varieties could be grouped as the tall or medium height (>130 cm) varieties and three were short or dwarf types (37%) mainly because the former had a higher leaf-to-stem ratio (1.4 in dwarf and less than 0.8 in tall varieties, P<0.05). On the other hand the tall varieties gave higher (P