The production characteristics of Sophora alopecuroides populations in different habitats

In order to compare the production characteristics of Sophora alopecuroides from arid and moist habitats, the indices including herbage yields, seed yields, seed sizes and hard seed rates were measure for the samples from five positions in main distribution areas including Linze County and Minqin County, Gansu Province; Yanchi County, Ningxia Province; Left Banner and Ejina Banner of Alxa League, Inner Mongolia. The results showed that environments greatly affected the production characteristics of S. alopecuroides. The forage yield per branch (4.9 g) in arid habitats was less than that (7.2 g) in moist habitats. The average forage yield per unit area was 1 330.7 kg·ha-1 in arid habitats and 1 546.1 kg·ha-1 in moist habitats. The seed yields per area and branch, harvest indexes, hard seed rates and thousand seed weights in arid habitats were all higher than those in moist habitats. The average actual seed yield and harvest index were 335.0 kg·ha-1, 1.2 g per branch and 17.0% in arid habitat, which were significantly increased (P<0.05) by 2.2, 1.7 and 2.1 times than those in moist habitat. The average rate of hard seed in arid habitat was 91.0% which was 5.7% higher than that in moist habitat. The average thousand seed weight was 19.5 g in arid habitat, which was 1.3 times of that in moist habitat. In both two habitats, the fertile shoots density and seeds per pod had greatly significant correlations (P<0.01) with seed yield per unit area. The nationwide herbage yield of S. alopecuroides was estimated to be 2 395 000~2 783 000 tons and the seed yield was estimated to 278 000~603 000 tons based on the measured data.