Shanmugam Rajasekar, Shui-Zhang Fei snd Nick Christians
Colonial bentgrass is a cool-season, sod-forming perennial primarily grown in northeastern and northwestern regions of the United States. This fine textured grass spreads by short rhizomes and stolons to form close tight turf. Colonial bentgrass is better adapted to mowing height of 0.5 inch and is best suited to golf course fairways and tees rather than greens. It requires low maintenance and low fertility, and it is also more cold tolerant than Kentucky bluegrass.
Velvet bentgrass, the finest textured of all bentgrasses, is adapted to cool, moist areas of coastal regions of the United States. It is primarily used on putting greens, where it forms an attractive, low-growing, compact turf with a high-quality putting surface. It is also the most shade-tolerant of all the bentgrasses and is used on fairways where nitrogen levels are kept low.
Despite the advantages of these two bentgrasses, they are not well utilized by the turf industry because of their unknown genetic diversity. This creates a great obstacle in the improvement of these species. Since these species are not exploited to the level of creeping bentgrass, there is little information available on their genetic diversity. Therefore, this needs to be explored to exploit their potential.
The objectives of this research are to: 1. Use AFLP (Amplified Fragment Length Polymorphism) markers to evaluate the genetic diversity of (USDA) accessions and estimate the genetic distance of the different accessions and varieties for improving the germplasm potential, and 2. evaluate the morphological variations under greenhouse and field conditions. AFLP markers are a powerful, consistent tool for evaluating genetic diversity and for DNA fingerprinting. The results are highly repeatable and contain a very low error rate of less than two percent.
This research involves 34 accessions, including 27 accessions of colonial bentgrass and 7 accessions of velvet bentgrass that were obtained from the Western Regional Plant Introduction Station (USDA) at Pullman, WA. All of the seeds are sown in cell packs and DNA will be extracted from young leaves after one month in the greenhouse or until it reaches a desirable height. After the seedlings reach a desirable height, they will be transplanted to the Iowa State Horticulture Research Farm for further studies on morphological characteristics under field conditions. All accessions will be planted in a randomized complete block design with a maximum of eighteen replications for each accession.
We expect to obtain reliable information on the extent of genetic variation and genetic distances among different accessions from molecular analysis. We also expect to obtain information on morphological variations among different accessions from our field studies. Based on the data that we expect to obtain on the range of morphological variations and genetic diversity among all accessions, we will be able to select plants with desirable traits for our breeding programs. Data on morphological and genetic variations is not available at present.
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ISU Turfgrass:2003 Turfgrass Report | College of Agriculture |
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