Meiotic behavior of Brachiaria decumbens hybrids

Brachiaria decumbens is a forage grass of inestimable value for livestock in Brazil due to its production of good quality forage even when planted on acid and poor soils, although it is susceptible to pasture spittlebugs. Only one cultivar, cv. Basilisk, has been used as the pollen donor in crosses with Brachiaria ruziziensis since 1988 at Embrapa Gado de Corte Research Center. Breeding within the species only became possible from 2009 when sexual accessions were successfully tetraploidized using colchicine. Three sexual genotypes were obtained and hybridization within B. decumbens was finally achieved. Here, we evaluated microspore tetrads using conventional cytology and found meiotic indexes above 78% for all three female genitors (cD24-2, cD24-27, cD24-45), but a low meiotic index (