Zoysiagrasses are warm-season grasses distributed throughout tropical and temperate zones of eastern Asia and Oceania, mainly in Japan, Korea and China. In Japan, there are wide variations in morphological and physiological traits among natural populations of zoysiagrass, for example, in color-retention in winter, salinity tolerance, and growth rate of stolons. In order to facilitate the utilization of diversity in zoysiagrasses, we have applied DNA marker techniques into the breeding program of zoysiagrasses. In this paper, we review the genetic analyses of Zoysia using DNA markers, including (1) the investigation of genetic variations among Z. japonica accessions collected from several populations in Japan and (2) efforts to identify quantitativetrait loci related to winter leaf color. Moreover, we have incorporated fransformation approaches into the breeding program. In this paper, we review transformation experiments of zoysiagrass with fiinctional genes such as herbicide resistance genes anda new frial to improve the forage quality of zoysiagrass by a new gene silencing technique.
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