Estado del conocimiento del mejoramiento genético de cespitosas.

Population centers are constantly growing, even more in urban zones, for which the demand for plants for landscaping purposes and recreational areas also increases considerably. These zones represent unique and hostile conditions for plant growth, even that of turfgrass species. The environments where these species are grown are very influenced by man and are considered highly stressing, because they combine a large number of biotic and abiotic stress factors. In this sense, the development of new varieties adapted to abiotic stress is an aspect which has been unnoticed. That is why the development of specific breeding programs for local conditions constitutes an urgent need for the turfgrass industry. Conventional plant breeding methods have been successfully used to obtained improved varieties; however, the use of modern genetics and biotechnology tools has marked a new milestone in turfgrass breeding, which is aimed, mainly, at the attainment of abiotic stress tolerant varieties. This paper presents a bibliographic review about the state of the art in the topic of turfgrass species breeding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]