Warm-season turfgrass species genotype-by-environment interaction for turfgrass quality under drought

One of the biggest challenges the turfgrass industry is currently facing is limitations of available water for irrigation of turfgrass areas. Efforts on breeding for drought resistance have increased over the past several years across the United States. Thus, the objectives of this study were to evaluate the performance of bermudagrass (Cynodon spp. Rich.), St. Augustinegrass (Stenotaphrum secundatum (Walter) Kuntze), seashore paspalum (Paspalum vaginatum Swartz) and zoysiagrass (Zoysia spp. Willd.) breeding lines from five different breeding programs under drought and estimate genetic parameters in order to increase selection efficiency for drought resistance improvement in these breeding programs. The germplasm sources were bermudagrass from Oklahoma State University and University of Georgia (UGA); St. Augustinegrass from North Carolina State University, Texas A&M University System (TAMUS) and University of Florida (UF); zoysiagrass from UF and TAMUS; seashore paspalum from UGA. Field trials were conducted from 2016 to 2019 at research facilities in Citra, FL and Dallas, TX. The response variables evaluated were per cent living ground cover (%GC), and turfgrass quality under normal or non-drought (TQND) and drought conditions (TQD). The genetic variance was significant for TQND and TQD in bermudagrass, TQD in St. Augustinegrass and all traits in zoysiagrass. The heritability estimates were higher for TQD than for TQND in bermudagrass and St. Augustinegrass. Genetic correlation estimates showed that indirect selection can be effective to select drought-resistant genotypes. Several genotypes performed better than all commercial cultivars in both St. Augustinegrass and zoysiagrass.