Abstract
BackgroundInterspecific hybrid bermudagrass [Cynodon dactylon (L.) Pers. x C. transvaalensis Burtt-Davy] is one of the most widely used grasses on golf courses, with cultivars derived from ‘Tifgreen’ or ‘Tifdwarf’ particularly used for putting greens. Many bermudagrass cultivars established for putting greens can be genetically unstable and lead to the occurrence of undesirable off-type grasses that vary in phenotype. The objective of this research was to genetically and phenotypically differentiate off-type grasses and hybrid cultivars. Beginning in 2013, off-type and desirable hybrid bermudagrass samples were collected from golf course putting greens in the southeastern United States and genetically and phenotypically characterized using genotyping-by-sequencing and morphology.ResultsGenotyping-by-sequencing determined that 11% (5) of off-type and desirable samples from putting greens were genetically divergent from standard cultivars such as Champion, MiniVerde, Tifdwarf, TifEagle, and Tifgreen. In addition, genotyping-by-sequencing was unable to genetically distinguish all standard cultivars from one another due to their similar origin and clonal propagation; however, over 90,000 potentially informative nucleotide variants were identified among the triploid hybrid cultivars.ConclusionsAlthough few genetic differences were found in this research, samples harvested from golf course putting greens had variable morphology and were clustered into three distinct phenotypic groups. The majority of off-type grasses in hybrid bermudagrass putting greens were genetically similar with variable morphological traits. Off-type grasses within golf course putting greens have the potential to compromise putting surface functionality and aesthetics.
Highlights
Interspecific hybrid bermudagrass [Cynodon dactylon (L.) Pers. x C. transvaalensis Burtt-Davy] is one of the most widely used grasses on golf courses, with cultivars derived from ‘Tifgreen’ or ‘Tifdwarf’ used for putting greens
Genotyping-by-sequencing Over 878 million reads were generated through Illumina sequencing, with 271 million from the Illumina HiSeq platform and an additional 606 million from the same libraries run on the Illumina NextSeq platform
An initial 1,088,920 total variants were identified with an average read depth of 4.9 sequences for the triploid bermudagrass (C. dactylon x C. transvaalensis) samples
Summary
Interspecific hybrid bermudagrass [Cynodon dactylon (L.) Pers. x C. transvaalensis Burtt-Davy] is one of the most widely used grasses on golf courses, with cultivars derived from ‘Tifgreen’ or ‘Tifdwarf’ used for putting greens. X C. transvaalensis Burtt-Davy] is one of the most widely used grasses on golf courses, with cultivars derived from ‘Tifgreen’ or ‘Tifdwarf’ used for putting greens. Many bermudagrass cultivars established for putting greens can be genetically unstable and lead to the occurrence of undesirable off-type grasses that vary in phenotype. Beginning in 2013, off-type and desirable hybrid bermudagrass samples were collected from golf course putting greens in the southeastern United States and genetically and phenotypically characterized using genotyping-by-sequencing and morphology. ‘Champion’ and ‘MiniVerde’ were selected from somatic mutations in established ‘Tifdwarf’ plantings [5, 23], whereas ‘TifEagle’ was a putative mutant from radiationinduced ‘Tifgreen’ or ‘Tifway II’ rhizome [18, 20, 41]. “ultradwarf” cultivars such as ‘Champion’, ‘MiniVerde’, and ‘TifEagle’ were once identified as off-types
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