Publication Date
1989
Description
Increasing yield of animal product per unit of input is the ultimate objective of any forage breeding project. It increases the efficiency of production and the profit of the producer. It may be achieved by screening and utilizing the world diversity of a species as has been demonstrated in Cynodon spp. (Burton, 1947, 1988). It can also be realized by recurrent restricted phenotypic selection (RRPS) within a narrow-based grass population. Pensacola bahiagrass, Paspalum notatum var. saure Parodi, a sexual diploid (2n = 20) that occupies several million hectares in the southern USA is such a grass. It originated as a few escaped plants from seed brought to the Pensacola, Florida area in the digestive tracts of cattle shipped from Santa Fe, Argentina (Burton, 1967). The first plant breeding product of Pensacola bahiagrass that increased forage yields in plots 25 % and in grazed pastures 17 % was Tifhi 1. Seed for Tifhi 1 was produced by harvesting all seed from a field planted vegetatively to alternate strips of two selected self-sterile cross-fertile clones. By 1960 when planting seed fields became too labor intensive to interest commercial seed growers, mass (phenotypic) selection was chosen as the method to increase forage yields of Pensacola bahiagrass. Other objectives were to determine the amount of diversity for forage yield in closed populations of Pensacola bahiagrass and its top yielding 2-clone hybrid and improve the efficiency of mass selection.
Citation
Burton, GLenn W., "Great Diversity for Increased Yield within Narrow Grass Population" (2025). IGC Proceedings (1989-2023). 2.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/igc/1989/session3b/2
Included in
Agricultural Science Commons, Agronomy and Crop Sciences Commons, Plant Biology Commons, Plant Pathology Commons, Soil Science Commons, Weed Science Commons
Great Diversity for Increased Yield within Narrow Grass Population
Increasing yield of animal product per unit of input is the ultimate objective of any forage breeding project. It increases the efficiency of production and the profit of the producer. It may be achieved by screening and utilizing the world diversity of a species as has been demonstrated in Cynodon spp. (Burton, 1947, 1988). It can also be realized by recurrent restricted phenotypic selection (RRPS) within a narrow-based grass population. Pensacola bahiagrass, Paspalum notatum var. saure Parodi, a sexual diploid (2n = 20) that occupies several million hectares in the southern USA is such a grass. It originated as a few escaped plants from seed brought to the Pensacola, Florida area in the digestive tracts of cattle shipped from Santa Fe, Argentina (Burton, 1967). The first plant breeding product of Pensacola bahiagrass that increased forage yields in plots 25 % and in grazed pastures 17 % was Tifhi 1. Seed for Tifhi 1 was produced by harvesting all seed from a field planted vegetatively to alternate strips of two selected self-sterile cross-fertile clones. By 1960 when planting seed fields became too labor intensive to interest commercial seed growers, mass (phenotypic) selection was chosen as the method to increase forage yields of Pensacola bahiagrass. Other objectives were to determine the amount of diversity for forage yield in closed populations of Pensacola bahiagrass and its top yielding 2-clone hybrid and improve the efficiency of mass selection.
