LAUSR

Centipedegrass, Eremochloa ophiuroides [Munro] Hack., is a low‐maintenance, warm‐season turfgrass commonly grown in the southeastern United States. Limited information is known about the genomic regions that control centipedegrass traits, including stigma color. Stigma color can impact seed set and can have a role in insect pollination in other plant species. In this study, we used a genome‐wide association study to detect a genomic region on the Hi‐C genome assembler (HIC‐ASM)‐8 found to control stigma color. Examination of the most associated single‐nucleotide polymorphic (SNP) markers revealed that plants with a homozygous C/C allele had mainly purple stigmas but could be white or a mixture of colors, whereas accessions that were T/T for these loci had only white stigmas. Two candidate genes, ctg780.162 and ctg780.158, with homologs involved in anthocyanin accumulation, were identified near the most significant SNPs. The entire ctg780.158 gene was sequenced from multiple accessions, and the white stigma accessions contained a large insertion before the start codon. Similarly, white accessions (TT) had three SNPs in the ctg780.162 coding region as compared to purple accessions (CC). This study identified candidate genes for stigma color and characterized the utilization of the ctg780.158 insertion.