Wilman love grass (Eragrostis superba) is a species used worldwide to rehabilitate degraded grasslands. Although this species could present lower nutritional quality and water stress tolerance than other grass species. Thus, the aim of this study was to characterize the morphological, nutritional, stomatal and molecular diversity induced through gamma radiation in Wilman lovegrass. With this, new materials with potential for grasslands rehabilitation could be selected based on their agronomic and ecological importance. Seeds were irradiated through gamma radiation with 60Co. The doses evaluated were 0 (control), 100, 200, 300, 450, 600, 900, 1400 and 2000 (Gy). Ten plants were evaluated per irradiation dose under greenhouse conditions, through 10 morphological characters related to forage quality. This was performed at the flowering and maturity stages. Individuals with outstanding characteristics were selected and characterized nutritionally, stomatally and molecularly by AFLP molecular markers. All the selected mutants presented less lignin (P<0.01) than the control, in the two phonological stages evaluared. The mutants 200-3 and 200-7 showed a higher (P<0.01) protein content during maturity than the control. In addition, there were differences (P<0.01) among the mutants and the control on stomatal density and area. Also, the mutants were genetically wide different compared to the control, with genetic distances from 0.37 to 0.57 according to the Dice coefficient. The resulting phenotypic and genetic variability allowed selecting M1 mutants with better nutritional quality and stomatal characteristics. In the case these characteristics get fix in the following generations, new genetic material of agronomic and ecological interest will be available. Such material can be used on the rehabilitation of degraded grasslands.
Oral presentation and poster titles, abstracts, and authors from the Society for Range Management (SRM) Annual Meetings and Tradeshows, from 2013 forward.