Prairie cordgrass (Spartina pectinata Link.) is indigenous throughout most of the continental United States and Canada to 601N latitude and is well suited to marginal land too wet for maize (Zea mays L.) and switchgrass (Panicum virgatum L.). Evaluations of prairie cordgrass in Europe and North America indicated it has high potential for biomass production, relative to switchgrass, in short-season areas. Our objective was to describe morphology and biomass production and partitioning in mature stands of 'Red River' prairie cordgrass and determine biomass production of natural populations on marginal land. This study was conducted from 2000 to 2008 in eastern South Dakota. Mean biomass production of mature stands of Red River was 12.7 Mg ha À1. Leaves composed 488% of the biomass, and 60% of the tillers had no internodes. Belowground biomass to a depth of approximately 25 cm, not including roots, was 21 Mg ha À1 . Tiller density ranged from 683 tillers m À2 for a 10-year-old stand to 1140 tillers m À2 for a 4-yearold stand. The proaxis was composed of about eight phytomers, with rhizomes originating at proximal nodes and erect tillers at distal nodes. Vegetative propagation was achieved by both phalanx and guerilla growth. Differences among natural populations for biomass were expressed on gravelly marginal land. However, production, averaged across populations, was low (1.37 Mg ha À1) and comparable to 'Cave-In-Rock' switchgrass (1.67 Mg ha À1) over a 4-year period. The large carbon storage capacity of prairie cordgrass in proaxes and rhizomes makes it useful for carbon sequestration purposes. Prairie cordgrass should be compared with switchgrass and other C 4 perennial grasses along environmental gradients to determine optimum landscape positions for each and to maximize bioenergy production and minimize inputs.

Prairie cordgrass (Spartina pectinata Bosc ex Link) is being developed as a cellulosic biomass crop. Development of this species will require numerous steps, including breeding, agronomy, and characterization of the species genome. The research in this paper describes the fi rst investigation of the transcriptome of prairie cordgrass via Next Generation Sequencing Technology, 454 GS FLX. A total of 556,198 expressed sequence tags (ESTs) were produced from four prairie cordgrass tissues: roots, rhizomes, immature infl orescence, and hooks. These ESTs were assembled into 26,302 contigs and 71,103 singletons. From these data were identifi ed, EST-SSR (simple sequence repeat) regions and cell wall biosynthetic pathway genes suitable for the development of molecular markers which can aid the breeding process of prairie cordgrass by means of marker assisted selection. P RAIRIE CORDGRASS (PCG) is a native grass species of the North American Prairie and has recently gained attention as a species suitable for the production of cellulosic biomass for producing biofuel . PCG is a warm season, C 4 grass with a geographical range extending from Texas to the Arctic Circle (USDA-NRCS, 2008) and having the highest latitude of distribution of any C 4 species (Potter et al., 1995). PCG has been utilized ecologically for revegetation, stream bank stabilization, and habitat development. In addition, this species has been used as a forage species . PCG is able to survive in a wide variety of environmental conditions, from open arid prairies and high railroad embankments to wet areas with high salinity and insuffi cient aeration of the soils where neither switchgrass (Panicum virgatum L.) nor maize (Zea mays L.) can be grown to their full potential . Th e inherent tolerance of PCG to these environmental conditions will allow the production of cellulosic biomass from land that is unsuitable for conventional crop production.On the basis of these favorable growth characteristics, research attention is being directed toward the development of PCG as a cellulosic biomass crop species. Indubitably, genetic improvements will be made to PCG to enhance this species for utilization as a source for biomass. Th ese genetic changes could occur via conventional breeding and marker assisted selection breeding or by incorporation of favorable genes (or characteristics) through plant transformation techniques. To facilitate any genetic improvement in PCG, comprehensive knowledge of the genome and its gene expression profi ling is essential. Limited genetic studies have been performed in PCG to date. Genetic diversity of populations of PCG with amplifi ed fragment length polymorphisms (AFLP) has been studied (Moncada et al., 2007; J. Gonzalez, unpublished data). Th e development of molecular markers for breeding can be achieved rapidly by utilizing techniques such as enriched genomic libraries and parallel pyrosequencing techniques. Both of these methods can provide considerable amounts of information about the genome structure of this species...

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The use of DNA sequence-based comparative genomics for evolutionary studies and for transferring information from model species to crop species has revolutionized molecular genetics and crop improvement strategies. This study compared 4485 expressed sequence tags (ESTs) that were physically mapped in wheat chromosome bins, to the public rice genome sequence data from 2251 ordered BAC/PAC clones using BLAST. A rice genome view of homologous wheat genome locations based on comparative sequence analysis revealed numerous chromosomal rearrangements that will significantly complicate the use of rice as a model for cross-species transfer of information in nonconserved regions.

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