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Inter-morphotype hybridization in tall fescue (Festuca arundinacea Schreb.): exploration of meiotic irregularities and potential for breeding

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Abstract

The Continental morphotype of tall fescue is one of the main forage and turf grass species. However, it suffers from summer drought, especially in dry and hot climates. On the other hand, the Mediterranean morphotype of tall fescue display summer dormancy. Hybridization of the two morphotypes seems to be an efficient way to introgress summer dormancy from Mediterranean morphotypes into elite cultivars of the Continental morphotype. In this study, we performed a series of reciprocal crosses producing F1 hybrids. Phenotyping revealed heterosis for plant height, fresh weight and dry matter yield, with hybrids generally outscoring parental genotypes. On the other hand, F1 hybrids had reduced fertility and lower seed set. This was a consequence of meiotic irregularities. Both parental morphotypes carry chromosome pairing regulators responsible for diploid-like behavior in meiosis. However, it is clear from this study that the regulators from the two morphotypes are not compatible. We observed high frequency of multivalent formation and homoeologous chromosome pairing in F1 hybrids. Molecular and cytogenetic analyses indicate high level of genome differentiation between both morphotypes. This might be caused either by massive genome reshuffling during the evolution or, most likely, by origination of the two morphotypes from different parental species. As such, introgression-form of breeding involving several rounds of backcrosses resulting in the restoration of chromosome pairing regulator (at least in some plants) appears to be the only way to achieve stability of the hybrid genomes and thus, wider utilization of genetically stable and fertile hybrid tall fescue for forage and turf.

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Acknowledgements

We express our thank you to Prof. Adam J. Lukaszewski (University of California, Riverside) for his critical reading and valuable comments.

Funding

Funding was provided by National program of sustainability I (Grant No. LO1204) and European Regional Development Fund (Grant No. CZ.02.1.01/0.0/16_019/0000827).

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Author notes

  1. David Kopecký and Shyamal K. Talukder have contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Experimental Botany, Academy of Sciences of Czech Republic, Šlechtitelů 31, Olomouc, Czech Republic

    David Kopecký, Jana Zwyrtková & Jaroslav Doležel

  2. Noble Research Institute, 2510 Sam Noble Parkway, Ardmore, OK, USA

    Shyamal K. Talukder, Mike Trammell & Malay C. Saha

Authors
  1. David Kopecký
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  2. Shyamal K. Talukder
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  3. Jana Zwyrtková
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  4. Mike Trammell
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  5. Jaroslav Doležel
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  6. Malay C. Saha
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Contributions

DK, ST, JD and MS designed the research project, ST, MT and MS performed crossings and phenotyping, ST made marker distribution analysis, JZ performed Southern hybridization experiments, DK made cytological experiments including chromosome pairing analysis, DK, ST and MS drafted the manuscript and JD revised the manuscript critically for important intellectual content.

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Correspondence to David Kopecký.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Electronic supplementary material

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ESM 1

Primer sequences of probes used for Southern hybridization (XLSX 9 kb)

ESM 2

Linkage groups (LGs), number of markers associated with particular linkage phase and pairing potential of each LG in both R43-64 and AGFRA103-2 parental genetic maps (XLSX 12 kb)

ESM 3

Detailed chromosome pairing data of Continental (R43-64) and Mediterranean (AGFRA 103-2) morphotypes and their hybrids (XLSX 11 kb)

ESM 4

Molecular cytogenetic analyses of tall fescues. FISH with probes for tandem repeats, 45S rDNA and genomic DNA revealed variability in genome constitution between both morphotypes of tall fescue. An example of FISH (a) with fpTR12 (green color) and fpTR6 (red color) followed by (b) reprobing with 45SrDNA (red color) and genomic DNA of F. glaucescens (green color) is given for the Mediterranean morphotype (2n=6x=42) (TIFF 4727 kb)

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Kopecký, D., Talukder, S.K., Zwyrtková, J. et al. Inter-morphotype hybridization in tall fescue (Festuca arundinacea Schreb.): exploration of meiotic irregularities and potential for breeding. Euphytica 215, 97 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10681-019-2419-0

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