Different Stability Methods for Cultivar Recommendation in Elephant-Grass for Energy Purposes in Brazil

Abstract

The elephant-grass undergoes successive cutting and periodical evaluations that it possible to identify clones with high stability for dry matter production, which can be used for energy production. The present study was carried out to evaluate stability dry matter yield for different parametric and non-parametric methods in elephant grass genotypes for biomass production undergoes successive cutting in the agroclimatic conditions of the Norte Fluminense (RJ, Brazil). The variable measured in the 40 genotypes was dry matter yield (DMY) at 2009, 2010 and 2011 in a field study designed as randomized block design with two replicates. Each sample was grown in different environment condition. The stability methods tested were the Yates and Cochran’s, Plaisted and Peterson’s, Wricke’s ecovalence, Annicchiarico’s, Lin and Binns’ and Kang and Phan’s. Results indicated that cutting (E) and genotypes (G) influenced significantly on the performance of dry matter yield. The non-parametric stability methods were effective for the evaluation of stability in dry matter yield. Genotypes Mercker, Pinda-México, Mercker 86-México, Guaçu/IZ, Mercker Pinda, P-241-Piracicaba and Cubano Pinda were stable stability dry matter yield. Hence, there are genotypes may be exploited in future breeding programmes in order to improve productivity of upland elephant grass over environment.

Forage Performance and Detection of Marker Trait Associations with Potential for Napier Grass (Cenchrus purpureus) Improvement

“…These findings were consistent with the observed negative correlation between fiber components and CP, IVOMD, and ME. A previous report [46] also indicated that an increase in fiber components reduces cellular nutrients, such as crude protein and digestibility. Furthermore, a PCA partitioned the genotypes into three cluster groups; for example, genotypes in cluster one showed high CP, IVOMD, and ME values, while genotypes in cluster two showed high fiber components and forage biomass yield in both wet and dry seasons.…”

Estimating Elephant-Grass Adaptability and Stability for Energy-Biomass Production by Regression Models

“…The significance of the G × H interaction demonstrates that the relative performance of the genotypes was not consistent throughout the successive harvests. Significant G × H interactions in the evaluation of elephant grass for energy generation over several harvests were also reported by Rocha et al (2015), Araújo et al (2017), and Silva et al (2018b).…”

“…Therefore, investigating the interaction through methodologies of adaptability and stability shall contribute to a more in-depth analysis of the genotypes' performance. Silva et al (2018b) evaluated elephant grass at annual harvests, and joint analysis of variance showed significant effects of the genotype × harvest interaction on dry matter yield, indicating that the genotypes showed different production performances at each harvest.…”

“…In spite of all of these favorable characteristics, research focusing on the breeding of elephant grass for energy generation can be considered still incipient, especially when compared with that of many commodities. In this regard, the State University of Northern Rio de Janeiro (UENF) develops an elephant-grass breeding program aimed at the assessment of the viability of use of plant biomass and at the selection of high-yielding genotypes with appropriate biomass quality to be used in the generation of energy (Silva et al, 2017(Silva et al, , 2018a(Silva et al, , 2018bDaher et al, 2014;Menezes et al, 2016;Sousa et al, 2016Sousa et al, , 2017Araújo et al, 2017).…”