158 The 1 st International Seminar on Animal Industry Bogor, 23-24 November 2009 Early Growth of Panicum sarmentosum Roxb. – A Promising Grass in Livestock - Coconut Integration System Tarsono 1 , Mustaring 1, A.M. Amir 2 , and A.L. Amar 1 1 Animal Husbandry Department, Faculty of Agriculture, Tadulako University, Palu (94117) Central Sulawesi 2 Faculty of Political and Social Sciences, Tadulako University, Palu (94117) Central Sulawesi ABSTRACT Coconut plantations have been long widely used as growing area. In Central Sulawesi this inte- grated system traditionally plays important roles in small scale farmers. In Central Sulawesi, the system is suitable and productive forage genotypes are important aspect for the production sys- tems. Panicum sarmentosum and Panicum maximum were compared in a plot trial under coco- nut plantation at Lalombi of Lembasada village, South Banawa, district of Donggala. The treat- ments: P. sarmentosum, P. maximum, P. sarmentosum with Desmanthus virgatus, and P. maxi- mum with D. virgatus were replicated 5 times. The 20 experimental units were arranged in completely block randomized design. This paper reports plant height, number of tiller, and her- bage production at the early growth, 8 weeks after planting, of the grasses. The study has shown that P. sarmentosum grew better than P. maximum, both on grass monoculture, and on mixed- with desmanthus. P. sarmentosum and P. maximum did not differ statistically in plant heights, neither without (149.3 cm vs. 141.7 cm), nor with desmanthus (138.7 cm vs. 133.9 cm). Never- theless, the number of tillers and dry forage yields of P.sarmentosum was significantly higher than those of P. maximum, both without and with desmanthus, i.e.; 145 vs. 81 and 124 vs. 75, and 425.6 vs. 235.1 kg/ha and 316.5 vs. 141.2 kg/ha, respectively. The correlation of these two attributes is also significantly high (R 2 = 0.9132). This result has suggested that P. sarmentosum grows better than P. maximum that well adapts under shade. It is concluded, therefore, P. sar- mentosum is another promising grass for use in shaded niches. Key words: Panicum sarmentosum; Integrated farming; shaded niches INTRODUCTION Steady growth of the human population leads to an increased demand for agricultural products. These stuffs essentially depend on agricultural land availability, while this sort of land is continuously shrinking resulting from land use convertion (Singh and Ghosh, 1993; Sukmana, et al., 1994), which is another imfact of the population increase and needs. In addition, the number of farm animals has increased, resulting in severe competition for land use between crops and livestock, there- fore, there is an urgent need for increased pro- ductivity per-unit area from forage plants to help redress the problem (Blair, 1991; Dzow- ela and Kwesiga, 1994). Incorporation of for- age plants onto plantation lands is an alterna- tive solution to provide herbage. Morover ris- ing livestock under plantation crops has long been practised, such as on coconut lands in Central Sulawesi, though none or very limited forage improvements have been done by the farmers. Overall integrated farming is suggested as the largest category of livestock systems in the world in terms of animal numbers, prod- uctivity and the number of people it services (Thornton et al., 2002). They maintain that, over the last decade, meat production from these systems has grown at a rate of about 2% per year, and about two-thirds of the rural small-scale farmers rely on mixed crop- livestock systems for their livelihoods. Moreover, given the demand increases for livestock products forecast for the coming decades, mixed systems are going to have to provide a disproportionate part of this in- crease, especially in developing countries – so they will become even more important in the future (ILRI, 2000 ). Coconuts plantation lands have long been widely used in rising livestock in most of tropical countries. This integrated land-use system plays important roles for small scale farmers. In Central Sulawesi, however, the system is still practiced by farmer traditional- ly with limited forage improvements. Since it is relized that integrated farming systems are