Silage corn, reckoned as the "King of Fodder", is made by whole fermented corn plants. "Silage corn fodder is of high yield, low cost, rich nutrition, small production space, and can be preserved for a long time, and supplied throughout the year, is the most effective way to solve the needs of green crude feed, Pak-China cooperation in this domain will efficiently relieve the fodder shortage and development bottleneck of husbandry in Pakistan," Dr. Cheng Guanglei, president of China Seed Association Silage Branch, says a report.

Compared with grain corn and hay, silage corn has great advantages as feed for dairy cattle, beef cattle and sheep.

Its first characteristic is high yield, "The harvest index of silage corn was 0.9, while that of grain corn was only 0.45. This means that under the same area, the yield of silage corn can be more than twice as much as that of grain corn," Dr Cheng introduced.

In addition, silage corn also has been praised for its high nutritional value. He added: "General forage is low in calories and single in nutrition, while silage corn is rich in starch, protein and high quality fiber. At present, large-scale ranchings in China, basically all use it as feed for livestock. Actually, there were few farms doing this before 2015, but in recent years, as the rapidly introducing and popularizing of silage corn, dairy production across the country also has skyrocketed."

"Each dairy cattle needs to be fed about 25kg of silage corn fodder per day. Each 0.2 hectare of silage corn can feed one dairy cattle, 0.13 hectare can feed one beef cow, and 0.03 hectare can feed one mutton sheep," Dr. Cheng said.

Due to its outstanding performance on nutrition, durability and yield, using it as feed for cattle and sheep could significantly reduce costs of husbandry and alleviate high feed prices in Pakistan, while helping the livestock industry produce better quality products. "Moreover, silage corn also plays a great role in ecological protection. Using it to replace pasture can protect grassland and avoid damage to the ecological environment caused by overgrazing," Dr. Cheng said.

In recent years, silage corn in China has developed rapidly, and has gradually surpassed the level of the western world. Dr. Cheng introduced that, "since 2015, China introduced a bunch of favorable policies to reform the mixture of fodder.In 2016, the planting area of silage corn in China was still 1.04 million hectares, but in 2021, the data has reached more than 2 million hectares."

He said: "Northeast China, Huang-Huai Region and northwest China are the three main production areas of silage corn in China. Because the climate and soil of these three producing areas are different, the output of finished products will also have a relatively big difference. In the Huang-Huai region, the yield is about 45 tons per hectare, while in northwest China, where the climate is similar to Pakistan, the yield can reach 105-120 tons per hectare."

Dr. Cheng pointed out that there's a huge potential to develop silage corn fodder in Pakistan. He said: "Pakistan is rich in light and heat resources and has natural conditions for planting green corn. At the same time, the corn planting area accounts for 8.2 percent of the grain planting area in Pakistan, so it has sufficient experience in this field, which has laid a solid foundation for silage corn planting."