AFLP Analyses of Genetic Diversity in Bentgrass

Abstract

Bentgrasses (Agrostis spp.) are widely occurring temperate grasses with more than 220 species that represent a vast resource for genetic improvement of turfgrass cultivars. Bentgrasses are normally outcrossing species and exhibit many ploidy levels. Difficulties in morphological characterization, which are largely subjected to environmental influences, have resulted in many synonymous species and uncertainties in phylogenetic relationships. To study the genetic diversity and relationships between bentgrass species, 40 accessions from the USDA's germplasm collection representing 14 species of Agrostis from twenty countries were investigated by fluorescence-labeled amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) analysis. Four hundred AFLP markers from five chosen primer combinations were used to differentiate between bentgrass accessions of a bulk of 25 genotypes per accession. Genetic similarities between accessions ranged from 0.62 to 0.98 showing no duplication in the collection and a high level of diversity in Agrostis. Both principal component analysis and Unweighted Pair Group Method with Arithmetic Mean (UPGMA) dendrogram clearly distinguished seven groups. Genetic relationships between diploids and other polyploids were revealed in the cluster groupings.