Project Number: 5428-21000-012-09
Project Type: Reimbursable

Start Date: Sep 01, 2007
End Date: Jul 31, 2010

Objective:
Characterize the genetic diversity, geographic provenance, population structure and geographic and genetic correlations of natural populations of Indian Ricegrass and Needle and Thread Grass from the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument and other locations in the western United States.

Approach:
Genetic studies of wildland collections of Indian Ricegrass and Needle and Thread Grass from within the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument (12-15 accessions), from adjacent areas (10-12 accessions), and from distant collections throughout the Great Basin (20-22 accessions), as well as two developed releases of Indian Ricegrass will be conducted. Analysis of Amplified Fragment Length Polymorphism (AFLP) will be used to estimate the genetic variation within and between accessions of each of these species. AFLP profiles for a total of 384 individual plants (8 plants from each of 48 accessions) will be generated using 4-6 selective amplification primer pairs for each species. Geographic provenance will be characterized with ArcGIS v9.1, genetic diversity assessed with Leonard's similarity index, population structure assessed with Analysis of Molecular Variance (AMOVA) and diversity estimated as per Excoffier et al., geographic and genetic correlations will be characterized with Mantel's Test using NTSYS-pc, and dendrogram construction with PAUP.