Research Accomplishment Reports 2009

Plant Genetic Resources Conservation and Utilization

T.D. Phillips
Department of Plant and Soil Sciences

 

Non-Technical Summary

Plant genetic resources, along with water, air, soil, minerals, and crop management practices, are crucial parts of the agricultural production system that sustains humanity. The stability of the agricultural system of the United States and of the Southern Region is based primarily on non-indigenous crops such as peanuts, sorghum, bermudagrass, and many other crops that were imported years ago. Plant breeders, geneticists, plant pathologists, entomologists, archaeologists, anthropologists, ecologists, and other scientists benefit from access to a wide range of genetic variation that they may subsequently utilize in crop-specific selection, characterization, and evaluation studies. Genetic resources will impact future research and generations by ensuring that crop genetic diversity, including wild relatives of crops, are available for utilization in research whose specific objectives are not yet known.

2009 Project Description

Recently-developed red clover cultivars (Kenton and Kenway) have been released by Dr. Norman Taylor.

2009 Impact

In 2009, Dr. Todd Pfeiffer expanded his breeding work with sweet sorghum to include biomass/biofuel production. Pfeiffer has screened the PI collection and is using several accessions in crosses with established cultivars, and hybrid production. He and Dr. Morris Bitzer, retired grain crop specialist, send out large amounts of seed of several cultivars around the world. Pfeiffer became chairman of the Department of Plant and Soil Sciences at the University of Kentucky on July 1, 2009, but plans to continue some level of breeding work with sweet sorghum.

Dr. Tim Phillips has planted a trial to evaluate the winter hardiness in Kentucky of some warm season grasses in the S9 collection, as well as a breeding nursery for several native warm-season grasses. Only two accessions of flaccidgrass, PI 315868 and 434640 survived two winters, with PI 315868 being superior in hardiness and yield potential. Other warm-season grasses (switchgrass, big bluestem, indiangrass, sideoats gramagrass, and little bluestem) are being evaluated in nurseries for cultivar development.

Other than native warm-season grasses and sorghum accessions, germplasm from S-009 coming into Kentucky regularly includes peppers, watermelons, eggplants, and specialty legumes. In 2008, more accessions were shipped to private companies (non-university) than university researchers. The following table summarizes numbers of accessions from Griffin sent to Kentucky during 2005-2008:

 

Year	University of Kentucky	Kentucky State University	Private/Other
2005	57	21	13
2006	52	6	5
2007	387	6	25
2008	18	2	25

 

2009 Publications

Stefaniak, T.R., C. A. Rodgers, R. VanDyke, D. W. Williams and T. D. Phillips. 2009. The Inheritance of Cold Tolerance and Turf Traits in a Seeded Bermudagrass Population. Crop Science 49:1489-1495.