''Urochloa fusca'', the browntop signalgrass, is a wild grass species with a native range extending from Paraguay in South America to the southern United States (Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, New Mexico, Texas, and Oklahoma),
and it is now found as a weed in Australia.
The species is diploid, with a base chromosome number of 9, and utilizes the PCK enzymatic subtype of
C4 photosynthesis
carbon fixation or the Hatch–Slack pathway is one of three known photosynthetic processes of carbon fixation in plants. It owes the names to the 1960's discovery by Marshall Davidson Hatch and Charles Roger Slack that some plants, when suppl ...
. Based on a molecular phylogeny of the genus Urochloa, the closest relatives of ''U. fusca'' are ''
Urochloa arizonica'' and ''
Urochloa mollis'' The genome of ''U. fusca'' is currently being sequenced by the
Joint Genome Institute
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Joint Genome Institute (JGI), first located in Walnut Creek then Berkeley, California, was created in 1997 to unite the expertise and resources in genome mapping, DNA sequencing, technology development, and i ...
.
Ecology
Prefers moist and the disturbed areas at low elevations.
References
Panicoideae
{{Panicoideae-stub