Intra-population genetic diversity of Buchloe dactyloides (Nutt.) Engelm (buffalograss) determined using morphological traits and sequence-related amplified polymorphism markers.

Genetic variation and diversity are prerequisites for improvement of buffalograss breeding. To assess the within-population genetic diversity of buffalograss, seven morphological traits were evaluated to confirm the variations at the morphological level. The principal component analysis revealed that leaf length, leaf width and stolon branches had a significant contribution to the total variation. The first three principle components showed 72.55% variation. The DNA analysis performed using SRAP primers was used for deducing the diversity at the DNA level. A total of 125 bands were obtained with 8 selected SRAP primer pairs, of which 119 (95.2%) were polymorphic. The polymorphic information content ranged from 0.94 to 0.97 with a mean of 0.96; the marker index ranged from 10.34 to 18.43 with an average value of 14.28. The individuals were successfully assigned to two major groups according to sex in the PCoA and UPGMA dendrogram based on SRAP data, while the individuals could not be grouped based on morphological traits, and the two markers were not significantly correlated (r = 0.0753, P = 0.8489 > 0.05). The molecular data revealed that sex is a critical factor and that female and monoecious plants could be chosen as parents to breed new varieties.