PRELIMINARY RESULTS OF SOME FORAGE SPECIES POPULATIONS COLLECTED IN SARDINIA

M. Vargiu and E. Spanu

Centro Regionale Agrario Sperimentale, Viale Trieste 111, Cagliari, Italy.

In 1993 a plant collection activity was undertaken in different areas of Sardinian pastures.  In the mean time it was established the botanical composition of the pasture.  The collected accessions were studied for three years in three different types of soil.

This paper reports the preliminary results regarding the phenological cycle, vegetative growth, seed production and the 1000 seed weight of the most frequent species present in the swards.

The results showed great variability in all the studied parameters.  This could be useful for further breeding programs in order to obtain adapted ecotypes and varieties for the Mediterranean environments.

Keywords: biodiversity; forage plant collection; natural genotypes; seed production.