The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of the characteristics of basic crop substrates, such as the carbon, nitrogen, ash and volatile fatty acids contents, on the dynamics of the anaerobic digestion process. For this purpose, the stepwise anaerobic digestion of silage from six different plant species was carried out. Scaled probability distributions ( log-normal, log-logistic, logistic, Weibull and Gompertz) were used to approximate the cumulative methane production curves obtained. The results indicated that the Gompertz distribution best fit the process. The hazard function of the Gompertz distribution was used to describe the process change dynamics. Ridge regression models were made and tested to clarify the impact of the crop properties on the distribution parameters. The analysis results indicated that the initial rate of the process depended on the reactor acidity and that the nitrogen content of the substrate was a key factor that affected the process dynamics. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.