Harvest management

Proper harvest management is important for biofuel crops for high yields and ideal qualities. The harvest management practices include harvest frequency, timing and stubble height. Currently, most studies for harvest management are focused on switchgrass [29, 69, 73]. Although switchgrass can be harvested in 2 times a year in south part of USA [73, 74], swithcgrass in NGP can only be harvested once a year either after anthesis (summer) or killing frost (fall). For maximizing the biomass yields and chemical compositional attributes for biofuels, harvesting in killing frost is an ideal harvest management [29]. Another harvest practice in the NGP is harvesting every other year (biennial harvest). Comparing annual harvest and biennial harvest, average annual biomass yield is generally lower for biennial harvest. The only benefit for biennial harvest is reducing machine operation cost. However, biennial harvest improved the switchgrass stand health if harvested in summer [29]. The reduction of annual biomass yield in biennial harvest was related to species and mixtures in our long-term field study. The reduction in annual biomass yield due to biennial harvesting ranged between 20 to 50 percent. In general, biomass yield of intermediate wheatgrass reduced the most in biennial harvest. However, there was one dryland site that Sunburst switchgrass + Altai wildrye had higher yield on the biennial harvest [11, 75]. Cutting height during harvest also affect biomass yield in perennial grasses. In general, lower cutting stubble resulted in higher biomass yield than higher cutting [75].