Physiological and transcriptomic insights into the roles of growth and defense hormones in bermudagrass shade tolerance.

Shade-tolerant bermudagrass accession C792 maintains growth and modulates hormone responses more effectively than GZ under shade, with a 50% lesser decline in key growth traits.

• Why it matters: Understanding hormonal mechanisms behind shade tolerance can improve bermudagrass resilience and productivity in shaded environments, addressing gaps in knowledge about growth-defense trade-offs.
• What they did: Researchers analyzed two bermudagrass accessions using morphological, physiological (hormone profiling), and transcriptomic methods, focusing on hormone levels and gene expression changes under shade.
• The result: C792 showed increased IAA and GA1 levels, upregulated GA biosynthesis genes, and strategic defense hormone adjustments, enabling better growth retention and shade adaptation with minimized growth-defense trade-offs.