Heritability Estimates for Fine Fescue Species (Festuca spp.) in Response to Wear.

Communities and local governments around the country are currently focusing on reducing environmental effects and reducing the costs of recreational and homeowner landscapes.  One of the main areas of concern is maintaining turfgrass areas.   Currently research is being conducted in all facets of turfgrass breeding to develop lower maintenance turfgrass cultivars.  Fine fescues (Festuca spp.) have been identified as potential candidate species for immediate application.  Fine fescues have been shown to be drought resistant and require less mowing and fertilization compared to traditional species used in lawn and recreational sites.  However, one of their drawbacks is that they are regarded to be less tolerant to wear and traffic.   Information is lacking regarding the heritability and potential for improvement of many performance characteristics in the fine fescues including wear tolerance.  Two individual replicated field studies, which included 159 chewings fescue (F. rubra L. subsp. fallax (Thuill.) Nyman), 158 hard fescue (F. brevilipa R. Tracey), and 148 strong creeping red fescue (F. rubra L. rubra) entries, were conducted in New Brunswick, NJ and Minneapolis, MN during 2015 to determine the response and broad-sense heritability estimates for wear tolerance.  Heritability estimates for the three species fell between (0.56≤H­­²≤0.77) in the New Jersey location and (0.29≤H­­²≤0.57).  These estimates indicate that genotypic variance led to response and show the possibility for improvement of wear tolerance in fine fescues through breeding methods.