PERFORMANCE COMPARISONS OF CONVENTIONAL AND LABORATORY-SCALE ALFALFA HAY BALES IN ISOLATED ENVIRONMENTS

Citation
Wk. Coblentz et al., PERFORMANCE COMPARISONS OF CONVENTIONAL AND LABORATORY-SCALE ALFALFA HAY BALES IN ISOLATED ENVIRONMENTS, Agronomy journal, 86(5), 1994, pp. 811-819
Citations number
16
Categorie Soggetti
Agriculture
Journal title
ISSN journal
00021962
Volume
86
Issue
5
Year of publication
1994
Pages
811 - 819
Database
ISI
SICI code
0002-1962(1994)86:5<811:PCOCAL>2.0.ZU;2-X
Abstract
Negative quality changes, including Maillard reaction damage, in alfal fa (Medicago sativa L.) hay frequently are associated with spontaneous heating resulting from packaging and storing forage at moisture level s in excess of 200 g kg-1. Forage at three moisture levels (268, 229, and 185 g kg-1) was packaged in laboratory-scale bales at 1.0, 1.3, 1. 7, and 2.0 times the density of parent, conventional bales and subsequ ently incubated in two different isolated environments such that all m easured heat accumulation was the result of self-generated heat. Labor atory-scale hay packages generated measurable heat and exhibited quali ty changes when incubated (i) between straw bales stacked in an open-a ir pole shed and (ii) in insulated incubator boxes in a storeroom the minimum ambient storage temperature was set at 25-degrees-C. Heat deve lopment and negative quality changes were greater in the box-incubatio n system, indicating a need to control ambient storage temperature. At the high and medium moisture levels, acid-detergent insoluble N (ADIN ) fractions for high-density, box-incubated laboratory bales were at l east similar (P > 0.05) to those of parent, conventional bales, despit e large disadvantages in measures of accumulated heat. These responses in laboratory bales were consistent with those reported in previous h aystack-incubated studies and suggest that the environmental heat comp onent created by adjacent conventional bales in those studies may have had a limited direct effect on ADIN content. Increasing density of la boratory bales probably rendered alfalfa proteins more susceptible to Maillard reaction damage and/or allowed the reaction to proceed more e fficiently with respect to self-generated heat than it did in conventi onal bales.