Development of New Cultivars ‘TaeJi’ in Zoysiagrass by Polyploidy Breeding

Eun-Ji Bae1,*   Chung-Yeol Kim1   Chang-Hyun Sung1   Jun-Hyuck Yoon1   Eon-ju Jin1   

1Forest Biomaterials Research Center, National Institute of Forest Science, Jinju 52817, Korea

Abstract

Zoysiagrass is widely used for parks, golf courses, garden and playground in Korea. Development of new varieties of zoysiagrass suitable for field demand is required. This study was conducted to develop new zoysiagrass cultivars ‘Taeji. ‘Taeji’ is a developed new cultivar by polyploidy breeding. To produce ‘Taeji’, after 4 days of germination of the ‘Zenith’ (Zoysia japonica STEUD,) seeds were treated by colchicine as concentration of 0.2%, and also soaked for 24 hours. As measured DNA content with flow cytometry, chromosome ‘Taeji’ was increased by 1.98 times than that of ‘Zenith’. Investigated the morphological characteristics, leaf width, stolon internode length and thickness of ‘Taeji’ were increased by 68, 97, and 95% than those of ‘Zenith’, respectively. These results showed that ‘Taeji’ was the polyploids produced by treating colchicine into ‘Zenith’ and also its morphological characteristics were increased. From these polyploidy breeding results will be useful for breeding new zoysiagrass cultivars.

Figures & Tables

Fig. 1. Flow cytometric histograms of ‘Zenith’ and ‘Taeji’ of Zoysiagrass ( STEUD) of which somatic chromosomes were doubled by colchicine treatment. A: Zenith; B: Taeji.