warm-season bunch grass native to the eastern United States and is still often found east of Kansas and Oklahoma. This highly productive grass is best adapted to wet habitats; and remnant colonies are commonly found in flood plains and along stream banks. Eastern gamagrass is a relative of field corn (Zea mays) and is characterized by numerous short, well-developed rhizomes. Lower culm internod...

A hypothesis has been advanced that the incursion of woody plants into world grasslands over the past two centuries has been driven in part by increasing carbon dioxide concentration, [CO(2)], in Earth's atmosphere. Unlike the warm season forage grasses they are displacing, woody plants have a photosynthetic metabolism and carbon allocation patterns that are responsive to CO(2), and many have t...

Greenhouse gas emissions from ruminant livestock production systems contribute significantly to the environmental footprint of agriculture. Emissions are lower for feedlot than grass-based primarily because extra time required grass-finished cattle reach slaughter weight. In contrast, legume forages greater quality grasses, which enhances intake and food conversion efficiencies, leading improve...

Lignin is the prime factor influencing the digestibility of plant cell wall material. As concentrations of lignin increase, digestibility, intake and animal performance usually decreases. Presented is a simplified acid detergent lignin procedure which has been used to determine lignin concentration from a wide range of forages and also ryegrass at different stages of maturation. Forages used in...

Breeding of native cool-season grasses has the potential to improve forage production and expand the range of bioenergy feedstocks throughout western North America. Basin wildrye (Leymus cinereus) and creeping wildrye (Leymus triticoides) rank among the tallest and most rhizomatous grasses of this region, respectively. The objectives of this study were to develop interspecific creeping wildrye ...

Phytoremediation has become a promising technique for cleaning Pb-contaminated soils. Grasses have phytoextractor potential extracting metal from soil by transporting it and accumulating in high concentrations their shoots, they the ability to immobilize inactivate via phytoliths. The objective of this work was evaluate phytoremediation forage grasses through production phytoliths occlusion Pb ...

Near infrared reflectance spectroscopy (NIRS) has recently become a potentially valuable and reliable tool for analyses of plant samples in forage-breeding programs. The success of NIRS is dependent on identification of appropriate and reliable selection criteria and development of reliable calibration. The objectives of this study were to develop and compare NIRS analysis equations for the in ...

The impala, classified as an intermediate feeder among wild ruminants, grazes exclusively on green grasses during the summer rains but turns to an essentially browse habit during the winter, when a diet of leaves, pods, and twigs is supplemented with dried grasses. Scanning electron microscope studies of bacteria attached to the rumen epithelia of animals feeding on digestible, carbohydrate-ric...

Interseeding legumes into grass-dominated stands can benefit pasture and hay producers by increasing the yield and quality of forage they produce and reducing their need for inputs of nitrogen fertilizer. The challenge is to get the legumes established given the competition from existing vegetation. This study confirmed that suppressing the grasses with glyphosate prior to seeding results in th...

Secondary cell walls mediate many crucial biological processes in plants including mechanical support, water and nutrient transport and stress management. They also provide an abundant resource of renewable feed, fiber, and fuel. The grass family contains the most important food, forage, and biofuel crops. Understanding the regulatory mechanism of secondary wall formation in grasses is necessar...