Heritability of rhizomes in rhizomatous tall fescue cultivar JT-783

Jonathan E. Schnore

Tall fescue (Festucca arundinacea Shreb.) is an important bunch type turfgrass. The introduction of turf type tall fescue with rhizomes could have a positive impact on the sod industry by reduction in cost associated with netting tall fescue sod. A two year field study of the breeder field and foundation generation of the rhizomatous cultivar JT-783 was conducted near Moses Lake, Washington. At the same time a greenhouse study utilizing lysimeter tubes was conducted. The purpose of the field study was to determine the heritability of the rhizomatous trait within an open pollinated breeder field. The purpose of the greenhouse study was to compare the rooting characteristics of two rhizomatous cultivars to two non-rhizomatous cultivars under two fertilizer regimes. The breeder field of JT-783 was sampled randomly across a transect from southeast to northwest. 50 plants were harvested and removed to wash roots and inspect for rhizome production in the summer of 2011. 20 progeny of each parental line were planted in 2012 in a field in Moses Lake, Washington. 10 random plants were removed from the field and rhizomes were counted as present or absent. The lysimeter study conducted in Pullman, Washington was a random complete block design with 5 replications. The heritability of the rhizomes was estimated using the PROC MIXED model in SAS. Rhizome heritability was found to be low at R2 =0.018. However the mean rhizome number remained high among the progeny at 88%. The low heritability suggests that the trait could possibly be due to multiple genes which would have unpredictable heritability in an open pollinated random mating structure. The greenhouse lysimeter study showed no difference between cultivars on the second run, and significant differences between cultivars on the first run. The low fertility treatments had a higher root bulk density, root length and root diameter for both years. The lower fertility treatments stimulated the cultivars to explore more of the lysimeters to extract nutrients, which would explain the increased rooting for those treatments.

Heritability of rhizomes in rhizomatous tall fescue cultivar JT-783

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