Abstract
Twenty five populations and cultivars of tall fescue orignated in Central and South Europe, North Africa and West Asia, and three check cultivars were compared in the warm temperate zone of Japan for heading habit, seasonal growth, and crown rust resistance. Entries originated in Europe consisted of five early maturing populations and seven very late maturing populations which were derived from the mountainous area. Maturity of thirteen populations originated in North Africa and West Asia varied from early to medium, and their culm and spike lengths were generally longer than thnose of the populations originated in Europe (Table 1). The habit of seasonal growth was evaluated by principal component analysis on the basis of 15 characters related to seasonal growth. About 92% of the variation was extracted by the first, second and third components (Table 2). The first component shows the main growing season. The second component represents forage productivity. The third component appears to indicate the relation between summer and fall growth in the early stage and that in the grown stage. Entries were classified into two groups by the score of first component. Thirteen cultivars and populations originated in North Africa and West Asia belong to the Mediterranean Group, of which main growing season was late fall to spring. The entries belonging to Mediterranean Group were separated into the three subgroups, "M I", "M II" and "M III", by the scores of second and third components (Fig. 1, Table 4). Main growing season of the entries originated in Europe and checks was spring to fall, and they were separated into three subgroups by the scores of second and third components, too. Five early populations and two checks, "Yamanami" and "Fawn" consisted of "E I" group. They had good potentials for growth from early spring to fall in the warm region of Japan. Seven very late populations were formed "E II" group. In these characters, cultivar "Hokuryo" behaved intermediately between "E I" and "E II" group. Mediterranean group indicated high resistance to crown sust. "E I" group and "Hokuryo" had higher survival rates than the other group at the third years after transplanting.
