ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Plant Nutrition
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpls.2025.1644949
Optimizing harvest stage and drying time to enhance yield and nutritive quality of whole-plant Tithonia diversifolia forage meal in arid tropics
Provisionally accepted
Victor Alexander Temoche Socola1,2*
Cesar Vasquez1Joel Riojas2Emmanuel Sessarego1Anibal Rodríguez1José Ruiz1Juancarlos Cruz1- 1National Institute of Agricultural Innovation (INIA), Lima, Peru
- 2Universidad Nacional de Tumbes, Tumbes, Peru
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Tithonia diversifolia, also known as Mexican sunflower, is a tropical shrub with high forage potential, but limited information exists on optimal harvest timing to balance yield and nutritional value. This study evaluated the effects of harvest stage and plant part on the agronomic performance, biomass production, and nutritional composition of T. diversifolia under arid tropical conditions in northern Peru. A 3 × 3 factorial design was implemented, combining three regrowth stages (30, 45, and 60 days) with three plant fractions (leaf, stem, and leaf-stem mixture), with four replicates per treatment. Key agronomic traits, dry matter yield, and proximate composition-including crude protein (CP), crude fiber (CF), soluble carbohydrates (CHOS), and in vitro dry matter digestibility (IVDMD)-were assessed. Biomass yield increased significantly with harvest age, reaching 11.93 kg fresh weight and 3.45 kg dry matter per plant at 60 days. However, this gain was accompanied by reduced nutritional quality due to a higher stem proportion. Leaves harvested at 30 days had the highest CP (16.5%) and CHOS (48.2%) and the lowest crude fiber (CF; 19.3%), while stems showed the opposite trend in both ADF and NDF values. The 45-day leaf samples achieved the highest IVDMD (up to 62.34 ± 1.42%). A strong positive correlation was observed between leaf area and biomass yield (r = 0.93), and a moderate negative correlation with digestibility (r = -0.42). Overall, harvesting at 45 days provided the best balance between biomass production and nutritional value. These findings support the use of T. diversifolia as a strategic forage alternative in sustainable feeding systems for arid tropical environments.
Keywords: Nutritive Value, Digestibility, Forage potential, Phenological stage, leaf-to stem ratio
Received: 11 Jun 2025; Accepted: 27 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Temoche Socola, Vasquez, Riojas, Sessarego, Rodríguez, Ruiz and Cruz. 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: Victor Alexander Temoche Socola, National Institute of Agricultural Innovation (INIA), Lima, Peru
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