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Provides information about eastern gamagrass, a cousin to corn that thrives without replantings. Resistance to drought; Production of small grain kernels that may possibly be used as feed to farm animals or flour for bakery goods; Protein content of grain; Potential emergence as a dual-purpose forage-grain crop; Improvement of seed production.

The article focuses on the selection of a switchgrass variety that is suitable for different types of lands in the U.S. Farmers in northern U.S. latitudes may want to check with Michael D. Casler, a plant geneticist with ARS's U.S. Dairy Forage Research Center (DFRC) in Madison, Wisconsin. After 10 years of switchgrass breeding and evaluation, Casler says he has a pretty good sense of which cultivars for biomass productivity grow best where. For instance farmers in southern Minnesota would be wise to choose the cultivar Cave-in-Rock, says Casler, instead of Blackwell which is better suited to Kansas and Oklahoma. Fellow DFRC researcher Paul J. Weimer has also developed a method that can quickly predict the fermentability, or ethanol-producing potential, of a given cultivar.

Reports on selected grass variety that can adapt to seasonal weather changes to provide nutrition for range livestock and wildlife. Crested wheatgrass; Russian wildrye; Comments. INSET: Fruitful mountain ash..