Evaluation on the agronomic characters of five crested wheatgrasses under rainfed conditionl

In order to screen out high quality forage species/cultivar for the grassland construction and improvement in the cold arid and semiarid areas, five crested wheatgrasses from different regions were used to evaluate their agronomic traits under rainfed condition. The results indicated all the tested materials could complete whole growth period. The average growth days reached 119 days to 124 days. The winter survival rates reached as high as 93 %. There were some significant differences of all tested indexes. In terms of fresh weight, hay weight and seed production and other indicators comprehensively, the best one was Agropyron cristatum collected from Hebei, the second was A.trachycaulum from America, the other three materias including A.cristatum var. pectiniforme form Shanxi, A.desertorum from America, A.mongolicum from Gansu did not perform very well.