Seedling Selection for Morphological Characters Associated with Yield of Tall Fescue1

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Selection for herbage yield characters of forage grasses at an early stage of plant development would be desirable. Therefore, growth chamber and field experiments were conducted to determine if seedings selected for divergence in morphological characters associated with herbage yield remained consistent when plants were grown under field conditions. We also sought to determine the distribution of welght/tiller in field canopies.Genotypes of tall fescue (Festuca arundinacea Schreb.), selected for a range in yield/tiller as seedlings, generally maintained similar rankings when grown under low competition conditions in a replicated pot experiment in a growth chamber and under sward conditions in the field. In all studiest he high yleld/tiller genotype had a higher proportion of large tillers and a lower proportion of small tillers than did the low yield/tiller genotype. Weight/tiller within a genotype was distributed neither normally nor log normally. Predominant morphological characters associated with high yield/tiller and high forage yield in these genotypes were low rate of tiller production and high rate of leaf elongation

This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: