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The Neutralizing Power of Forage Crops for Organic and Mineral Acids

College of Agriculture, Cornell University, Ithaca, N. Y.

ABSTRACT

A study was made of the ability of forage crops to neutralize organic and mineral acids. Such crops as alfalfa, vetch, timothy, barley, oats, corn and bluegrass were employed. Finely ground portions of such crops were exposed to acids of known strength and any change in the intensity factor of the material noted.

It was observed that leguminous materials require more acid to bring about a change of 1 pH unit than was required by non-leguminous materials and that more acid was required by both types of material to change their reaction 1 unit in the region of pH 4.0 than was required in the region of pH 6.5. The strong mineral acids were more effective in this respect than were the organic acids.

From the data presented it seems doubtful whether certain leguminous materials contain enough fermentable carbohydrate material if it were converted quantitatively into organic acids to produce an intensity factor comparable to that found by other investigators in the good types of silage which have been produced from crop materials containing a larger percentage of fermentable sugars. It is concluded that this is probably the main reason why many failures have been recorded in attempts to produce silage from leguminous crops.