Utilizing Eastern Gamagrass for Early Spring Grazing and Late Fall Stockpile.

Selection and breeding to eliminate physiological dormancy in eastern gamagrass [Tripsacum dactyloides (L.) L.]

Morrison¹, J. I., B. S. Baldwin¹, and M.P. Nattrass¹

¹ Department of Plant and Soil Sciences, Mississippi State University; Starkville, MS

Eastern gamagrass [Tripsacum dactyloides (L.) L.] is a hearty, long-lived, perennial warm-season native grass. The species has been utilized for forage, wildlife, bioenergy, riparian buffer, and ornamental purposes. The most valuable and applicable of these purposes is as a forage crop, most effectively utilized as a grazing or hay crop. While major impediments including a hard seed coat and deeply dormant embryo limit more widespread use of eastern gamagrass, its quality and yield characteristics make it a highly desirable forage species. Beyond common endemic characteristics of high forage quality and outstanding biomass production, gamagrass may also offer advantages to growers interested in increasing the number of days spent grazing, as opposed to feeding stored feeds, like dry hay or silage. Eastern gamagrass commonly begins spring green up 3-4 weeks earlier than bermudagrass (Cynodon dactylon), and retains leaf integrity and canopy structure after late fall frost. Breeding efforts at Mississippi State University have begun to focus on using recurrent selection as a method to exploit early green-up, late maturity, and late-season canopy structure as beneficial characteristics for the use of eastern gamagrass as a very-early and very-late season forage/stockpile crop. A study was designed in 2013 using a RCB experimental design to compare differences in early season greenup, stage of maturity, and late season senescence and canopy structure, and their effects on overall forage quality and digestibility.