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ARS Home » Southeast Area » Tifton, Georgia » Crop Genetics and Breeding Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #167125
Title: DEVELOPMENT OF A BERMUDAGRASS CORE COLLECTION

Author
item Anderson, William - Bill
item Snook, Maurice

Submitted to: American Society of Agronomy Abstracts
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: 10/1/2004
Publication Date: 11/1/2004
Citation: Anderson, W.F., Snook, M.E. 2004. Development of a bermudagrass core collection (Abstract). In: Proceedings of the American Society of Agronomy, Oct. 31-Nov. 4, 2004. CDROM.

Interpretive Summary: not required

Technical Abstract: A world collection of 600 bermudagrass accessions is maintained in Tifton, GA. Forage and turf hybrid releases have been derived over the past half century by using highly diverse parents with genes for biotic and abiotic stress resistances, high forage yields, high ruminant digestibility and cold tolerance. Bermudagrass also has potential as a bio-fuel feedstock. More extensive and intensive chemical and cell wall analyses of the collection need to be performed to better assess the potential of lignocellulosic conversion to bio-fuels. To narrow the initial entries for these analyses, a core collection was developed using plant phenotype data. The objective was to compare diversity of bermudagrass accessions measured by plant phenotype and flavonoid profiles. During the spring and summer of 2003, 14 phenotypic characteristics were measured, standardized to a 1 to 5 scale and subjected to Cluster analysis. A subset of 160 entries was selected to represent diversity from eleven major clusters of the original data. Leaf tissue samples from the subset were collected, processed for flavonoid extraction and analyzed via HPLC. Six major clusters emerged from each the plant phenotype data and from analysis of flavonoid profiles. There were some similar groupings of entries between the phenotypic and flavonoid dendrograms, but also a great deal of scattering of flavonoid profiles over different plant idiotypes. A core collection based on both plant phenotype and chemical analysis would more accurately sample the true variability of bermudagrass collection.