A Novel Method for Generating Dihaploids in Tall Fescue

Within the Lolium-Festuca genome complex there is a need for modern breeding approaches that can facilitate the rapid development of improved germplasm or cultivars. Traditional recurrent or mass-selection methods for population or synthetic development are labor intensive and time consuming.  The recent development of dihaploid (DH) inducer lines of annual ryegrass (Lolium perenne L. subsp. multiflorum (Lam.) Husnot (syn. Lolium multiflorum Lam.) that exhibit genome loss when hybridized with tall fescue (Festuca arundinacea Schreb. syn. Lolium arundinaceum (Schreb.) Darbysh.) can provide an alternative breeding approach.  Hybridizations between the inducer lines and tall fescue result in F1 hybrids which can lose the ryegrass genomes resulting in an embryo with a full tall fescue genome.  This behavior results in the occasional generation of tall fescue DH lines through parthenogenic embryo formation within the F1 inflorescence.   This method has application toward developing homozygous lines of tall fescue, F1 hybrid tall fescue cultivars, applications in molecular marker-to-trait association studies and complementary nuclear/endophyte genome interactions.