The Effect of Propagation Method on the Morphology of Miscanthus x Giganteus.

Increased bioenergy demands have led to an increased demand for bioenergy crops. Among candidate bioenergy crops in the Midwestern US, Miscanthus × giganteus (Greef et Deu. Ex Hodkinson et Renvoize), has been shown to be a highly productive option. Although this crop has many attributes of an ideotypic bioenergy crop, sterility of this highly productive hybrid requires vegetative propagation. Typically this is done through rhizome propagation, but stem propagation, similar to other closely related warm-season grasses, is possible as well. However, previous work has shown that non-rhizome propagation has resulted in altered morphology in resultant plants. A field study was conducted at three locations in Iowa to determine if stem propagation, like hormone-assisted micropropagation, would result in altered morphology. It was found that some aspects of morphology were altered and some were not. Rhizome propagated plants exhibited larger basal circumferences (P = 0.0107) while stem propagated plants seemingly compensated for this by producing more stems per plant (P = 0.0492) suggesting that these two propagation systems result in similar productivity in M. × giganteus. Other attributes such as height and stem diameters of M. × giganteus plants were not different between stem and rhizome propagated plants (P > 0.05). Further, these differences and similarities were consistent throughout the 2nd and 3rd growing season of establishing M. × giganteus and the morphology of differentially propagated M. × giganteus responded similarly to the floods of 2008.