1998 Volume 43 Issue 4 Pages 418-423
Percent Brix of stalk juice and Sugar Index which is corrected percent Brix by the stalk dry matter percentage, were determined to investigate the relation with organic cellular contents (OCC), organic a fraction (Oa), and organic b fraction (Ob) and to develop the simple method of estimating the dry matter digestibility of forage maize (Zea mays L.). Both indices were highly and positively correlated with OCC and OCC+Oa contents, showing higher correlations in Sugar Index, which indicated that there was an effect of correction by stalk dry matter percentage. It was concluded that percent Brix was available enough to estimate the dry matter digestibility of forage maize and Sugar Index was more reliable than percent Brix. We propose Sugar Index for the estimation of dry matter digestibility irrespective of being more laborious than percent Brix and it would be usable to select the genotypes with high digestibility, which have high OCC content.
