Tall fescue (Festuca arundinacea Schreb.) is an important cool-season perennial grass species used as forage and turf, and in conservation plantings. There are three morphotypes in hexaploid tall fescue: Continental, Mediterranean and Rhizomatous. This study was conducted to develop morphotype-specific molecular markers to distinguish Continental and Mediterranean tall fescues, and establish th...

Grass tetany is a nutritional disease of ruminants caused by low dietary Mg. Previous research has shown that early spring P-fertilization increases the leaf Mg concentration of tall fescue (Festuca arundinacea Schreb.) hay. However, little is known about how P-fertilization alters the mineral concentration of tall fescue under grazing. Our objective was to compare, under grazing, the Mg, K, Ca...

Human assisted plant invasions from Europe to North America have been more common than the reverse. We tested endophyte-mediated performance of tall fescue in parallel three year experiments in Europe and the USA using endophyte infected and uninfected wild and cultivated plants. Experimental plants were subjected to nutrient and water treatments. Whereas endophyte infection increased tall fesc...

Tall fescue (Festuca arundinacea Schreb.) is an open-pollinated, perennial, cool-season turf and forage grass species of great economic importance. The main problems of maintenance of tall fescue, and many other turfgrasses, are two severe fungal diseases: gray leaf spot caused by Magnaporthe grisea, and brown patch caused by Rhizoctonia solani. Three genes from various sources have been introd...

Grazing endophyte-infected tall fescue (E+) negatively impacts cattle feed intake and growth negatively (Crawford et al., 1989). However, the interaction between environmental factors and animal genetics may influence important cattle growth measurements before and after the weaning process (Phillips et al, 2001). For example, polymorphisms (mutations) in the prolactin and cytochrome P450 genes...

Consumption of ergot alkaloid-containing tall fescue grass impairs several metabolic, vascular, growth, and reproductive processes in cattle, collectively producing a clinical condition known as "fescue toxicosis." Despite the apparent association between pituitary function and these physiological parameters, including depressed serum prolactin; no reports describe the effect of fescue toxicosi...

To address the problem of fescue toxicosis in grazing cattle, non-toxic endophytes from New Zealand have been used to infect tall fescue varieties grown in Georgia. The objectives of the present study were to determine animal performance and evaluate toxicosis in stocker steers and heifers grazing non-toxic endophyte-infected (AR542), endophyte-free (EF), or wild-type endophyte-infected (EI) Je...

To delineate the major processes associated with short water scarcity in four tall fescue species, we examined their enzymatic and nonenzymatic antioxidant activity and FaSGR expression levels. Moreover, we examined the possibility of Agrobacterium-mediated transformation of Arabidopsis P5CS1 gene in tall fescue. According to the results, proline has been introduced as an important compatible o...

Festuca arundinacea Schreb., commonly known as tall fescue, is a major forage crop in temperate regions. Recently, a molecular analysis of different accessions of a world germplasm collection of tall fescue has demonstrated that it contains different species from the genus Festuca and allowed their rapid classification into the three major morphotypes (Continental, Mediterranean and Rhizomatous...

Heat stress is a critical challenge to tall fescue (Festuca arundinacea Schreb.) in many areas of the globe and variations in genetic structure and functional traits is for the efficient breeding programs on developing heat tolerant cultivars. Tolerant-related morpho-physiological traits and simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers were employed to survey genetic diversity in greenhouse and growth ...