HERBAGE YIELD OF NAPIER GRASS (Pennisetum purpureum Schum.) AS INFLUENCED BY CLIPPING HEIGHT

Napier grass is a high yielding fodder crop with good palatability, highly nutritious especially when young, dark green leaves and less than 1 meter tall. This field study was conducted at Mindanao State University, General Santos City at the forage area of the College of Agriculture from March 1, 2019 to May 16, 2019 with the following specific objectives: First to determine the herbage yield of Napier as influenced by different height. Third, is to compare the number of days to shoot emergence after cutting at different height. The expiremental design used was Randomized Complete Block Design with five (5) treatment: T1 Control (no clipping), T2 Ground level clipping, T3 4 inches clipping, T4 6 inches clipping and T5 12 inches clipping and was replicated three (3) times. Result of the study shows that after 60 days from initial cutiing, the Napier grass produced significantly higher herbage yield in treatment 1 (without clipping) while those that were clipped at different heights were comparatively similar, the shoot emergence were not significantly affected while the number of shoots emerged form Napier clipped at different heights were statistically comparable