Climate Smart Brachiaria Grass

High quality feeds are essential for wellbeing of livestock, increase productivity, reduce production costs, improve incomes, and to achieve a sustainable livestock production. Improved forages, mostly of African origins have transformed livestock production system from subsistence to commercial scale in tropical and sub-tropics regions. For example, Brachiaria grass is the basis for the success of beef industries in South America particularly in Brazil where 99 million hectares are under Brachiaria pasture. Improved Brachiaria grass cultivars are characterized by high biomass yield, high nutritive values, resilience to various abiotic and biotic stressors including drought and pests and diseases. Besides agricultural importance, Brachiaria grass has several attributes of environmental significance such as its ability to capture atmospheric carbon-di-oxide into soils, maximize nutrient use efficiency, reduce soil erosion, and improve soil fertility. Due to immense potential of Bracharia grass in transforming livestock production system in SSA under changing climatic conditions, the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) launched the Climate smart Bracharia grass program in 2012 consorting with NARS, international organizations, and development partners. The program has identified Brachiaria grass cultivars suitable for different agroecologies in SSA, documented significant benefits of Brachiaria grass in livestock productivity (e.g. 15-40% increase in milk production and over 50% increase in animal live weight), developed improved practices for Brachiaria grass production, management and utilization, and increased availability of high quality forage in the dry season.