College of Agriculture and Bioresources
Permanent URI for this community
Browse
Browsing College of Agriculture and Bioresources by Subject "above-ground biomass"
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
Results Per Page
Sort Options
Item Investigation of responses of plant mixture to different water stress regimes in a pot experiment(2011-03-15) Wang, Z.; Schellenberg, M.P.; Zhao, M.; Han, G.When drought occurs, plants often exhibit a trade-off between productivity and survival. Here we report water deficit effects on biomass production of perennial plants in a pot experiment. We grew experimental plant communities containing monocultures (legume, grasses and shrub) and mixtures (legume+grasses, grasses+shrub and legume+grasses, grasses+shrub). Results from the experiment showed that: 1) compared to well-watered treatment, two water treatments (85 and 70% of field capacity) significantly decreased above-ground biomass of both monoculture and mixture (P<0.0001); 2) The mixture of alfalfa and blue grama had the highest biomass production; and 3) a significant positive (P<0.0001) linear relationship was found between the three water treatments and above-ground biomass.