Bermudagrass (Cynodon spp.).

Bermudagrass is an important warm-season forage and turf species widely grown in the southern United States. This chapter describes a rapid and efficient protocol that allows for the generation of a large number of transgenic bermudagrass plants, bypassing the callus formation phase. Stolon nodes are infected and co-cultivated with Agrobacterium tumefaciens harboring pCAMBIA binary vectors. Hygromycin phosphotransferase gene (hph) is used as the selectable marker and hygromycin is used as the selection agent. Green shoots are directly produced from infected stolon nodes 4 to 5 wk after hygromycin selection. Without callus formation and with minimum tissue culture, this procedure allowed us to obtain well-rooted transgenic plantlets in only 7 wk and greenhouse-grown plants in only 9 wk.