Introduction Lack of legume persistence is one of the main reasons for poor utilisation of grass-legume pastures in the tropics. Arachis pintoi (forage peanut) is currently the most promising forage legume for the humid tropics, mainly because of good persistence under grazing (Grof 1985; Fisher and Cruz 1995). The objective of this work was to show how two accessions of A. pintoi react to increasing herbage allowance levels when associated with two different grasses. Materials and methods Two grazing experiments were carried out at the Experimental Station of Embrapa Acre (10°01′59″S, 67°42′13″W), in Rio Branco, AC, Brazil. In Experi-ment 1, a nine-year-old Panicum maximum cv. Massai and A. pintoi Ac 01 pasture was grazed at three herbage allowance (HA) levels [9.0, 14.5 and 18.4% body weight (BW)], from October 2002 to December 2003. In Experiment 2, a three-year-old Brachiaria brizantha cv. Marandu and A. pintoi Ap 65 pasture was grazed at four HA levels (6.6, 10.3, 14.3 and 17.9%BW), from January to December 2003. Pastures were rotationally stocked and botanical composition was measured pre-grazing in each grazing cycle. Only results for the fi nal grazing cycle are presented.