Effects of mowing on plant regrowth and reproduction characteristics of invasive Cenchrus pauciflorus

An experiment was conducted to investigate the effectiveness of mowing on plant regrowth and reproduction characteristics of invasive Cenchrus pauciflorus Benth for controlling this invasive plant in the semiarid region of northwest Liaoning province. The results of this study showed that C. pauciflorus maintained a high growth rate during the whole growing season and showed a stronger regrowth ability and obviously seasonal effectiveness, indicating that the regrowth rates were same as the similar growth rates with quickslowquick rhythm when mowing was carried out at tillering stage and jointing stage, and that mowing at booting stage directly benefited the reproductive growth of C. pauciflorus. From 7 indicators of reproductive characteristics of C. pauciflorus, results of Principal Component Analysis showed that the cumulative contribution of the 2 factors was up to 93.07%, the first component factor was the plant height factor and the second factor was the branch factor. Except for the branch number per plant, this study suggested that the mowing at the different time had obviously control effect on C. pauciflorus reproductive ability by reducing a lot of caryopsis number, and the optimal mowing time was booting stage for control C. pauciflorus.