Identification of Vegetatively Propagated Turf Bermudagrass Cultivars Using Simple Sequence Repeat Markers.

Accurate identification of bermudagrass cultivars is necessary to ensure the purity of the cultivars produced by sod farmers, to protect the intellectual property of cultivar developers, and to assure cultivar purity for the benefit of turfgrass consumers. Vegetatively propagated turf bermudagrass cultivars have been extensively used in the turf industry not only in the USA but in many other countries. Accordingly, the objectives of the study were to examine SSR markers for their ability to distinguish commonly grown clonal turf bermudagrass cultivars, derived through crosses and mutations, from each other and their respective parent cultivars; and to develop a set of SSR markers for accurate identification of commercially used clonal cultivars. Thirty-two clonal turf bermudagrass genotypes comprised of 29 commercially released cultivars and three Oklahoma State University experimental lines were assessed by 11 microsatellite markers. A total of 141 alleles were generated for the 11 loci in the 32 bermudagrass genotypes with an average of 12.8 alleles per locus. Forty-four alleles were cultivar-specific. The SSR markers successfully identified 22 cultivars while somaclonal mutation cultivars had the same banding patterns with two respective parent cultivars: Tifgreen and Tifway.  It was concluded from the study that the SSR markers are highly polymorphic and can be utilized as a reliable tool for accurate cultivar identification in non-mutated bermudagrass.