INTRODUCTION Population explosion and urbanization has been resulted in scarcity of arable lands, reducing the availability of land for fodder/forage production due to allocation of most of this arable land to food, fiber or other cash crops (Arif et al., 2006a). In order to overcome this issue, interest has recently been shown in “dual purpose” cultivation of cereal crops in the regions where winter is mild. In dual purpose (DP) cereal production, a cut is made in early winter to take the fodder and then the crop is left to grow for grain, compared to the grain-only (GO) cropping system in which no cut is made. When these cereal crops are managed properly as dual purpose crop, these provide excellent grazing and high-quality silage or hay. Similarly, such dual purpose cereal production has been suggested to be economically feasible when considering the fodder and grain produced per land area (Arif et al., 2006a). This encouraged the adoption of the strategy at experimental level by several researchers, particularly for wheat crop (Epplin et al., 2000). Among several other cereals, wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) is considered as the most promising candidate as dual purpose cereal. Wheat is the leading food grain crop of Pakistan and occupies a central position in the formulation of agricultural policies. It contributed 14.4 percent to the value added in agriculture and 3.1 percent to GDP. Livestock sector has its due importance in Pakistan. About 30-35 million rural populations is directly or indirectly engaged in livestock rearing. Economic feasibility has been confirmed for wheat as fodder alone or in a “dual purpose” approach (Epplin et al., 2000; Arif et al., 2006a). Even the introduced winter wheat germplasm has been tested for their disease resistance status for their suitability as dual purpose varieties (Ali et al., 2009a). The fodder produced from wheat has been suggested to be palatable and its crude protein level and digestibility is considered comparable to that of alfalfa (Hossain et al., 2003). Wheat pasture is a valuable source of high quality forage; it is high in protein, energy and minerals, and low in fiber. Beside grain, wheat straw constitutes an integral part of the daily ration for livestock. To reduce competition between area devoted to grain and forage crops and make sure the availability of forage during winter, there is a need to shift from grain-only (GO) to dual-purpose (DP) wheat system of forage plus grain production. A pre-requisite of the system is to select the appropriate planting time, the most important management decision for any dual-purpose crop, as late sowing could result in low yield and thus low benefit cost ratio (Akpandey, 2005; Singh et al., 2005). A strategy needs to be devised to provide the Pak. J. Agri. Sci., Vol. 52(2), 467-475; 2015 ISSN (Print) 0552-9034, ISSN (Online) 2076-0906 http://www.pakjas.com.pk EARLY PLANTING DATE CAN COMPENSATE THE REDUCTION IN WHEAT YIELD DUE TO FODDER CUTTING IN DUAL PURPOSE WHEAT Khalid Naveed 1 , Muhammad Ayaz Khan 2 , Mohammad Safdar Baloch 2 , Muhammad Arif 3 , Sammar Abass Naqvi 4 , Jabbar Khan 5 and Sajid Ali 6 1 Department of Agriculture, University of Haripur, Haripur, Pakistan; 2 Department of Agronomy, Gomal University, Dera Ismail Khan, Pakistan; 3 Department of Agronomy, The University of Agriculture, Peshawar, Pakistan; 4 Institute of Horticulture, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, Pakistan; 5 Department of Biological Sciences, Gomal University, D.I. Khan, Pakistan; 6 Institute of Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering, The University of Agriculture, Peshawar, Pakistan. * Corresponding author’s e-mail: bioscientist122@yahoo.com Despite the great potential of dual purpose wheat, limited exploitations have so far made due to decrease in final grain yield owing the removal of early crop assimilates as fodder. A better planting time decision; however, can compensate this reduction through considerable accumulation of assimilates for both fodder and grain. The influence of planting time to compensate this reduction is yet unknown. We studied the effect of planting time in dual purpose wheat context over two years (2009-10 and 2010-11) at DI Khan, Pakistan, using wheat cv. Zam-04 sown on four planting dates in dual purpose vs. grain only treatments. Significant influence of planting dates and cutting was revealed on physiological attributes and yield potential. Although both cutting and late sowing negatively influenced grain yield and yield related traits. The early sowing resulted in a higher yield undercut than the late sown crop without cut, with an increased leaf area index (20%), leaf area duration (20%), crop growth rate (16%), number of productive tillers (12%), number of grains spike -1 (25%), 1000-grain weight (2%) and grain yield (24%). The early sowing in a dual purpose wheat system compensated the overall yield reduction by fetching high incomes than grain only wheat system. Keywords: Sowing date, crop growth, yield potential, wheat as fodder