Study on the relationship between vegetative characteristics and aboveground biomass of eight annual forages

The outdoor pot experiment was conducted to investigate the relationships between growth characteristics (including plant height, growth rate, leaf weight, leaf area, root length) and aboveground biomass of 8 annual forages. The results showed that the growth characteristics of 8 forages were significantly different. The aboveground biomass was positively correlated with plant height，growth rate，leaf weight，leaf area and root weight except for root length based on the linear regression analysis. While the stepwise regression analysis showed that the aboveground biomass was only positively correlated with plant height，growth rate and leaf area. These results indicated that it was better to consider multiple growth characteristics for exploring the relationship between forage growth characteristics and biomass.