Blue Panic Grass

Blue panic grass (Panicum antidotale, gharam or ghirib in much of the country) is the tall, productive fodder grass to put along a canal bank or across tired rangeland in the Punjab plains and on the Sindh coast. It is a robust, rhizomatous perennial that stands 1.5–3 m high and answers cutting with a fast flush of leaf, which makes it a dependable cut-and-carry feed even where the irrigation water has gone salty.¹ For a farm that needs bulk forage and a living bund in the same season, it is hard to beat.

Where it thrives

Blue panic is built for warm, dry conditions and difficult soils. It grows on both light sandy ground and heavy black cracking clay, and on saline and alkaline soils where many grasses fail, which is why it is recommended for the salt-affected fringes of the Indus plain.¹ It tolerates salty irrigation water well, excluding sodium and holding a high potassium-to-sodium ratio in its shoots, which is how it keeps producing where the water has gone brackish.² Short, thick, somewhat bulbous rhizomes and fibrous roots to about 45 cm let it persist through dry spells and resprout after cutting or grazing.¹

Role in the system

Here it works as a support-stratum grass: a fodder bank, a soil-holder on bunds and channel edges, and a steady source of mulch. Crude protein runs over a wide range with stage of growth — roughly 4–16% of dry matter — and is highest before flowering.¹ Cutting interval is the lever: on a short, roughly 20-day interval crude protein has reached about 15.6% even under saline irrigation, while acid-detergent fibre climbs as the interval lengthens and the grass matures.² Cut it young and often and it stays leafy and useful; let it bolt and it turns coarse. The same trait that makes it good feed makes it good biomass: the regrowth you do not carry to the animals can be laid down as chop-and-drop around establishing trees.

Grazing value

Blue panic provides palatable pasture and is valued as a fodder crop on light sandy soils in dry areas, and under good conditions it is a heavy producer of green forage.¹ The leafy early-cut material carries the best protein, so for a cut-and-carry system feeding penned ruminants, a regular short cutting interval keeps both yield and quality up.²

Cautions

Manage the cutting interval deliberately: post-flowering material is high in fibre and low in protein, so forage left to stand loses much of its feed value.¹ As a vigorous rhizomatous grass it can spread from a bund into a cultivated bed, so site it where you want a permanent grass strip rather than at the edge of a clean-tilled plot.

Sources

1. Heuzé, V., Tran, G., et al. (Feedipedia). “Blue panic (Panicum antidotale).” INRAE, CIRAD, AFZ & FAO.
2. Hussain, F. & Durrani, M. J., et al. (2023). “Influence of cutting time interval and season on productivity, nutrient partitioning, and forage quality of blue panicgrass (Panicum antidotale Retz.) under saline irrigation.” PMC.