Growth Strategy of Rhizomatous and Non-Rhizomatous Tall Fescue Populations in Response to Defoliation

Racheal H. Bryant, Cory Matthew and John Hodgson
Additional contact information
Racheal H. Bryant: Faculty of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Lincoln University, P.O. Box 85084, Lincoln 7647, New Zealand
Cory Matthew: Institute of Agriculture and Environment, Massey University, Private Bag 11-222, Palmerston North 4442, New Zealand
John Hodgson: Institute of Agriculture and Environment, Massey University, Private Bag 11-222, Palmerston North 4442, New Zealand

Agriculture, 2015, vol. 5, issue 3, 1-15

Abstract: The aim of this study was to determine the morphology of rhizome production, in two contrasting rhizomatous (R) and non-rhizomatous (NR) tall fescue ( Schedonorus arundinaceus (Schreb.) Dumort) populations, and to assess whether rhizome production is associated with changed biomass allocation or plant growth pattern. Growth of R and NR populations was compared, under hard defoliation (H, 50 mm stubble), lax defoliation (L, 100 mm stubble), or without defoliation (U, uncut). Populations were cloned and grown in a glasshouse and defoliated every three weeks, with destructive harvests performed at 6, 12 and 18 weeks. R plants allocated more biomass to root and less to pseudostem than NR plants. Plant tiller numbers were greatly reduced by defoliation, and R and NR populations differed in leaf formation strategy. R plants had narrower leaves than NR, but their leaves were longer, because of greater leaf elongation duration. R plants were more plastic than NR plants in response to defoliation. Ultimately, biomass allocation to rhizomes did not differ between populations but R plants exhibited a subtle shift in distribution of internode length with a few longer internode segments typically located on secondary and tertiary tillers.

Keywords: leaf appearance rate; site filling; plant morphology; Festuca arundinacea; relative tiller appearance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q1 Q10 Q11 Q12 Q13 Q14 Q15 Q16 Q17 Q18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/5/3/791/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/5/3/791/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jagris:v:5:y:2015:i:3:p:791-805:d:55656

Access Statistics for this article

Agriculture is currently edited by Ms. Leda Xuan

More articles in Agriculture from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().