Evaluation of genotypic variation in heat tolerance of tall fescue by functional traits

Tall fescue is an important cool season turfgrass. Summer high temperature negatively affects the performance of tall fescue in transitional and warm climate zones. To identify heat tolerant material, 120 tall fescue accessions from different regions of the world were collected and subjected to high temperature under the greenhouse and the growth chamber conditions. Average temperature was 43 °C in the greenhouse trial. Meanwhile, in the growth chamber trial there were 38/30 °C (day/night) and 25/16 °C for heat stress and control, respectively. Leaf water content, leaf dry weight, leaf fresh weight, growth rate (GR), turf quality (TQ), survival rate (SR), chlorophyll content (Chl), evapotranspiration rate (ET) and electrolyte leakage were determined. Significant effects of accessions, duration time and heat treatment on most characteristics were observed. Wild accessions exhibited higher variations in most of the studied traits than commercial cultivars. There were differences in GR and ET with greater variation coefficients than other traits between accessions, suggesting GR and ET could be effective indices for evaluating heat tolerance of tall fescue accessions. Three principal components in growth chamber trial and two principal components in greenhouse trial were extracted. Principal component analysis indicated that common PC1, correlated with TQ, SR and Chl, was named as “turf performance component”, which explained 43.17 % and 39.24 % of genetic variations in the greenhouse trial and the growth chamber trial, respectively. PC2 that defined as “growth potential component” could explain 23.26 % of total variability in the greenhouse trial and 20.36 % in the growth chamber trial. PC3 was named as “leaf water potential component”. Two regression models (F = 0.65 × F1 + 0.35 × F2) and (F = 0.54 × F1 + 0.28 × F2 + 0.18 × F3) were formulated by factor analysis to evaluate heat tolerance of tall fescue accessions in greenhouse and growth chamber trials, respectively. Accessions from subtropical monsoon climate zone generally exhibited better heat tolerance. In contrast, accessions from East Asia showed more heat sensitive. Finally, five accessions including PI 598574, PI 608787, PI 559374, Pure Gold and PI 527504 were selected as heat tolerant accessions for future tall fescue breeding.