Citation: Kopecký D, Harper J, Bartoš J, Gasior D, Vrána J, Hřibová E, Boller B, Ardenghi NMG, Šimoníková D, Doležel J and Humphreys MW (2016) An Increasing Need for Productive and Stress Resilient Festulolium Amphiploids: What Can Be Learnt from the Stable Genomic Composition of Festuca pratensis subsp. apennina (De Not.) Hegi? Front. Environ. Sci. 4:66. doi: 10.3389/fenvs.2016.00066 An Increa...

The Festuca genus is thought to be the most numerous genus of the Poaceae family. One of the most agronomically important forage grasses, Festuca pratensis Huds. is treated as a model plant to study the molecular mechanisms associated with tolerance to winter stresses, including frost. However, the precise mapping of the genes governing stress tolerance in this species is difficult as its karyo...

A single chromosome of the grass species Festuca pratensis has been introgressed into Lolium perenne to produce a diploid monosomic substitution line 2n = 2x = 14. The chromatin of F. pratensis and L. perenne can be distinguished by genomic in situ hybridization (GISH), and it is therefore possible to visualize the substituted F. pratensis chromosome in the L. perenne background and to study ch...

A key gene involved in plant senescence, mutations of which partially disable chlorophyll catabolism and confer stay-green leaf and cotyledon phenotypes, has been identified in Pisum sativum, Arabidopsis thaliana, and Festuca pratensis by using classical and molecular genetics and comparative genomics. A stay-green locus in F. pratensis is syntenically equivalent to a similar stay-green locus o...

A single chromosome of the grass species Festuca pratensis has been introgressed into Lolium perenne to produce a diploid monosomic substitution line 2n = 2x = 14. In this line recombination occurs throughout the length of the F. pratensis/L. perenne bivalent. The F. pratensis chromosome and recombinants between it and its L. perenne homeologue can be visualized using genomic in situ hybridizat...

Adhesion sites on grass roots for Klebsiella strains carrying type 3 or type 1 fimbriae or both were determined. Adhesion of the strains to the roots of Poa pratensis and Festuca rubra was highly localized; the bacteria adhered strongly to root hairs and with a markedly lower efficiency to the surface of the zone of elongation and to the root cap mucilage. No adhesion to the epidermal cells bet...

We report on the evaluation of a novel grass hybrid that provides efficient forage production and could help mitigate flooding. Perennial ryegrass (Lolium perenne) is the grass species of choice for most farmers, but lacks resilience against extremes of climate. We hybridised L. perenne onto a closely related and more stress-resistant grass species, meadow fescue Festuca pratensis. We demonstra...