Welcome

The goal of the NC State Turfgrass Breeding and Genetics program is to improve the sustainability and economic gain of the overall turfgrass industry in the state through the development of cultivars that require reduced inputs and that are capable of tolerating biotic and environmental stresses while still maintaining good quality and overall performance. Additionally, the program is focusing on generating genomic information and utilizing it to relate phenotypic traits to DNA nucleotide polymorphism. Current research activities include, but are not limited to:

• Breeding for cold tolerance in warm-season grasses
• Breeding for heat and drought tolerance in tall fescue
• Breeding for disease resistance
• Utilization of exotic germplasm
• Mutation breeding
• Application of molecular markers to turfgrass improvement
• QTL mapping
• Molecular taxonomy