Abstract

Bamboo is a group of woody perennial evergreen plants in the true grass family Poaceae, subfamily Bambusoideae, tribe Bambuseae. Chusquea is a genus of bamboo with about 120 species. Most of them are mountain clumping bamboos native from southern Mexico to southern Chile and Argentina. They are sometimes referred to as South American mountain bamboos. Unlike most other bamboos, the stems of these species are solid, not hollow. They are of economic and high cultural significance in East Asia and South East Asia where they are used extensively in gardens, as a building material as well as a food source but the Chilean market gives not account of this reality. Moreover, Chilean bamboo has little scientific or technological studies. One of the scopes without research is related with a crop of Chusquea culeau. To solve this we have sown, starting of seeds, with a separation of 1.5 m each plant of Chusquea culeau given a total of 375 plants. Six years later was made the decision of to study the evolution of this crop and to evaluate the biomass that was originated. The biomass was separated in culms with one year old from culms with more than one year old. It was kept up two age groups, greater than one year and less than one year in which were identified some biometric characteristics such as basal diameter, height, mass of leaves and twigs and mass of culms. The data collected were treated statistically to find a relationship between the variables and biomass generated and compared with wild Chusquea culeau.