Abstract:

Saccharum spontaneum is a common wild plant resource widely spread in China. In order to develop and utilize Saccharum spontaneum as a herbal energy plant, twenty-one wild accessions were assessed by production performance. The results were as follow: all accessions could finish a complete growth period. Accession SAGS08081’s growth period lasted 167 days as the longest one, whereas, accession SAGS08068 had the shortest growth period that was 127 days. Growth height and speed of twenty-one accessions varied almost the same, from jointing date to heading date, the speed of growth was the fastest. Among all production indexes, variation of individual dry yield and tiller number was the most significant, coefficient of variation was 52.39% and 46.30%, respectively. And number of internodes had the smallest coefficient of variation was only 14.99%. Yield of individuals was obviously different. Individual fresh yield ranged from 98.30 g to 1238.90 g, with an average 481.27 g. The dry yield was 45.39-335.62 g with an average 165.51 g. Cluster analysis divided all accessions into two groups, and accessions in group I were superior to group II at all indexes.