BIOMASS YEILD AT SORGHUM AT DIFFERENT DISTANCES BETWEEN ROWS IN THE CONDITIONS OF SOUTH ROMANIA

References: 14th International Multidisciplinary Scientific GeoConference SGEM 2014, www.sgem.org, SGEM2014 Conference Proceedings, ISBN 978-619-7105-15-5 / ISSN 1314-2704, June 19-25, 2014, Book 4, Vol. 1, 69-76 pp

ABSTRACT
Sorghum is one of the most drought tolerant plants which are of great interest in the area affected by drought. Sorghum is of interest both for producing grains and biomass used for different purposes. After harvesting the sorghum grain crops there is remaining a large amount of residues which represents biomass that could be used in different ways including as raw material for producing biogas. But for biomass production, especially it is used the biomass sorghum which is a sorghum type specialised in producing a large yield of biomass used as fodder as well as raw material for producing biogas. The aim of the paper is to present the biomass yield at sorghum which is of interest to be used as raw material for producing biogas. The researches were performed in the year 2013 in the specific conditions from South Romania. The field experiment was located at Moara Domnească, Ilfov County. It was used the sorghum hybrid Biomass 150 which was sowed at different distances between rows, respectively 75 cm, 62.5 cm, 50 cm and twin-rows of 62.5/37.5 cm (4 variants with four replications). The plant growth stages in which the biomass determinations were performed are the following: early dough-dough and fully ripe. In each of the two growth stages, there was determined the above-ground biomass both as fresh and dry biomass production per hectare. The fresh biomass was determined by weighing the plants from one square meter, while for dry biomass one plant of each experimental variant was oven dried.

Keywords: renewable energy, biomass, potential, sorghum, row distance