Description:
Vegetative collections of 326 big bluestem accessions were made in Minnesota and eastern South Dakota in 1985. More than 4000 individual plants were established in an evaluation nursery at the Northern Great Plains Research Lab at Mandan, ND. Evaluations in 1989 and 1990 included gridding the nursery into 4 x 6 plant plots. Two superior plants were selected in each 24 plant grid. Selected plants in each grid were rated for phenology and separated into early and late maturing populations in 1990. Forage analysis was run on plant samples collected from each of these selected plants. In the early maturing population the crude protein values were in the 6-10% range. This population (9063122) contained 94 accessions from throughout Minnesota and eastern South Dakota. Generally, these plants had fine leaf and stem material. Following establishment of this population at Mandan, ND, selected plants in this population were flagged during the 1993 growing season because they were taller, coarser, and later maturing than the rest of the population. Approximately 25 percent of the plants were removed. At the end of the growing season, seed was hand stripped from each remaining plant. After several years, all the seed was bulked into one lot.