Characterization of a genetically diverse collection of Trichloris crinita, a forage grass species native to the Monte region of Argentina

KOZUB PERLA CAROLINA; CAVAGNARO PABLO F.; CAVAGNARO JUAN B.; LAS PEÑAS MARÍA LAURA

Buenos Aires

Simposio; International Symposium of Forage Breeding; 2015

Facultad de Agronomía Universidad Nacional de Buenos Aires

Trichloris crinita (Lag.) Parodi (Poaceae, Chloridoideae), a widely distributed C4 grass species native to the Argentine ?Monte? phytogeographical region, is a valuable genetic resource for arid and semi-arid regions due to its good forage quality and drought tolerance. The Instituto Argentino de Investigaciones de Zonas Áridas (IADIZA) created a germplasm bank of Trichloris crinita with seeds collected from natural populations throughout 350.000 km2 of the Monte region. In the last years, our group has characterized these germplasm on the basis of morphological characters, biomass production, drought tolerance, and dry matter partitioning. Biomass production varied almost 9-fold between the most and the least productive accessions. Relative variation in biomass production among the accessions were consistent over three years and three sites (three environments) suggesting a genetic basis for this trait.Genetic diversity among Trichloris crinita accessions was assessed using AFLP molecular markers. As result, an AFLP-based dendrogram revealed clustering of the accessions based upon their biomass production. In addition, AFLP fingerprints allowed the discrimination of all the accessions evaluated.Cytogenetic studies, including chromosome counts and karyotype descriptions, were performed. The resulting data for all T. crinita accessions were consistent with a ploidy level of 2n=4x=40, as previously proposed for this species. In order to increase the molecular resources in this species, 100 SSRs markers were developed using nucleotide sequences of related species to T. crinita.In this work, advances in the genetic, physiological and phenotypic characterization of a genetically diverse T. crinita collection are presented and discussed.