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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sustain. Food Syst.
Sec. Agroecology and Ecosystem Services
Volume 9 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fsufs.2025.1529103
Nutritive Value of Perennial Pastures along an Elevation Gradient in Tropical Conditions
Provisionally accepted
Luis Alonso Villalobos Villalobos 1*
Claudia Arndt 2
Rein Van Der Hoek 3 Andre Mazzetto 4
David Robert Chadwick 5- 1 University of Costa Rica, San José, Costa Rica
- 2 CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), Kenya, Nairobi, Kenya
- 3 Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), Washington D.C., District of Columbia, United States
- 4 AgResearch Ltd, Hamilton, Waikato, New Zealand
- 5 Bangor University, Bangor, Wales, United Kingdom
To our knowledge, this study is the first one to show how the nutritional traits vary across an elevation gradient in tropical conditions as well as within the elevation ranges for each grass genus analyzed. With this study, we show that how the nutritive value of grass genera changes within the range of elevation at which they are grown in tropical conditions.Our study may be of interest to readers with backgrounds in agronomy, animal science, and ecology, among others.This study is unique as it includes C3 and C4 perennial grasses with different adaptation requirements, that are used in grass-based livestock systems. Because there are many countries with similar conditions located in the tropics (Central and South America and Africa), we consider this study to be relevant to start analyzing agroecological conditions and comparing nutritional value at different elevations.
Keywords: Digestibility, elevation, Fiber, grass genera, Perennial pastures, protein
Received: 15 Nov 2024; Accepted: 07 Mar 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Villalobos Villalobos, Arndt, Van Der Hoek, Mazzetto and Chadwick. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Luis Alonso Villalobos Villalobos, University of Costa Rica, San José, Costa Rica
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