Forage conditioning under Alpine environmental conditions

In mountain areas the location of the field can affect the climatic and vegetative conditions, and the operational characteristics of forage harvesters, thus influencing the effectiveness of crop conditioning. A method was established to compare the results from successive harvests through forage conditioning trials, carried out according to the vegetation and operational conditions of the field. A conditioning coefficient, defined by the relationship between the conditioned and non-conditioned forage, was used to define the effect of conditioning on the moisture evaporation process. Forage conditioning was found to be highly effective on fields where the combined effect of slope and exposure was to increase the intensity and duration of solar radiation; the benefit of forage conditioning was severely reduced in other cases. © 1995 Silsoe Research Institute.