Abstract:
Tall fescue is an out-crossing allohexaploid grass
species extensively used for forage and
turf worldwide. Cultivars of outbreeding forage gra
sses such as tall fescue are usually
synthetic populations derived from intercrossing se
veral selected parents using the
polycross method. In this study, the application of
AFLP molecular markers to optimize
genetic diversity in a polycross breeding program o
f tall fescue was evaluated. For both
phenotypic characters and AFLP molecular markers, t
wo polycrosses of six parental
plants with contrasting levels of genetic diversity
were composed. A fifth polycross
population was composed using six genotypes with th
e highest general combining ability.
The results of this study
showed that marker assistant parental selection pro
duced
superior progenies, indicating that selection based
on molecular marker diversity may be
an appropriate means to improve first generation pr
ogenies of tall fescue. This may be
mainly useful in large breeding programs because th
e identification of diversity based on
phenotypic traits is time consuming and may be infl
uenced by environmental effects.
Keywords:
AFLP, Phenotypic traits, Polycross, Tall fescue.
