SEED MASS VARIATION IN Trichloris SPECIES AND ITS RELATIONSHIPS TO ECOGEOGRAPHICAL VARIABLES

MARINONI, LORENA DEL ROSARIO; ZABALA, JUAN MARCELO; EXNER, ELIANA DE LUJÁN; PENSIERO, JOSÉ FRANCISCO

Buenos Aires

Simposio; 5th International Symposium of Forage Breeding; 2015

FAUBA, UNNOBA

The species of the genus Trichloris, T. crinita (Lag.) Parodi and T. pluriflora E. Fourn., are important components of Argentinian rangelands, notable for their forage quality and resistance to extreme environmental conditions such as drought and salinity. T. crinita has a wider distribution than T. pluriflora. The genebank belonging to the Facultad de Ciencias Agrarias of the Universidad Nacional del Litoral currently contains 48 accessions of T. crinita and 25 of T. pluriflora, corresponding to populations collected in Argentina. The aim of this study was assess the seed mass diversity of populations in the maternal environment and its correlation with ecogeographical variables. A nested design was carried out for this analysis (populations into species) to evaluate the seed mass variability. Then, correlation coefficients of Pearson were calculated for seed mass and ecogeographical variables (19 bioclimatic, 31 edaphic and 7 geophysical variables). There was a significant difference of seed mass between populations into species. The variation range was bigger in T. crinita than T. pluriflora (185 mg/1000 seeds vs. 98 mg/1000 seeds). For T. crinita populations were found correlation between seed mass and 20 ecogeographical variables whereas for T. pluriflora only a few correlations with edaphic variables were found. There was maternal effect on seed mass in T. crinita. Significant negative correlations (p