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 at similar growth stages. In the late maturing population the crude protein values were less than 6 percent. This population (9063121) contained 77accessions from southern Minnesota and extreme south eastern South Dakota. Following establishment of this population at Mandan, ND, seed was first harvested in 1993. At the end of the growing season, a representative sample of approximately 15 grams of seed was hand stripped from each plant. After several years, all the seed was bulked into one lot.