Ways of Increasing Seed Germination of Sweet Clover and Methods of Reducing the Amount of Coumarin in the Leaf-Stem Mass

The article presents the results of laboratory and field experiments on studying the influence of ways of presowing seed treatment and methods of reducing the amount of coumarin on yield and forage quality of sweet clover in the conditions of Northern Kazakhstan. The aim of the research is to study and to prove the effective way of presowing treatment of seeds and a method of decreasing the content of coumarin in order to increase the productivity and to improve the quality of clover forage. The experimental station of the North-Kazakhstan SRI of agriculture in 2015-2016 was conducted pursuant to the solution of tasks. In our experiments, it was shown that the proposed method of presowing treatment of sweet clover seeds improves the laboratory germination from 65.2 to 99.0% and the field germination from 33.1 to 72.8%. When applying the technique of reducing the content of coumarin, its content in the green mass of clover was 1.14%, in the hay dried at a temperature of 20C-0.65% and at a temperature of 60C-0.48%. The coumarin content decreased two times. The protein content of the hay dried at a temperature of 20C was 13.2%, at a temperature of 60C-15.1%. The content of fodder units at a temperature of 20C was 0.39%, at a temperature of 60C-0.47%.