Performance Comparison of Three Varieties of Amaranth (Amaranthus Hypochondriacus L.) at Different Harvest Time

Amaranth is one of the native plants of Africa is that in addition to the relative tolerance to drought conditions, has high potential forage production. The experimental design was a randomized complete block with factorial method, three varieties of Amaranth forage consist of Loura, Cim and Kharkovski and to harvest time before and after flowering with four replications at the Seed and Plants Improvement Research Institute of Iran in 2015. The results showed that significant difference? between the tested varieties in terms of total dry and? fresh forage yield, but there was not any significant difference between harvest time and interaction effects. Compare average showed a figure Loura whit 161.0 cm in cut1 had the maximum height and the Cim and Kharkovski respectively, with 155.0 and 146.9 cm stem height ranked in next categories.? The maximum stem diameter over the equivalent of 20.6 mm in class a belongs to Kharkovski rather than? the other two varieties? with average 16.9 and 16.8 mm. Finally the? Laura with 9090.3 and 13.05 total fresh and dry forage yield and relative superiority? of Crude protein, Crude fat, Digestibility, Relative Forage Quality and Relative Feed Value compared to the other two varieties were superior.