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There’s good and bad news from the 26th Seed Field Day, hosted by Pure-Seed Testing and Scotts Professional Seed, in Hubbard & Gervais, Ore.
The bad news is the cost to grow turf is increasing and becoming less profitable than other crops. For growers, wheat and corn are competing with grass. Turf payoff is slow compared to wheat, corn and alfalfa. Urea cost $100 more in June than it did in May, and $300 more than it did a year before that, says Kevin Turner, senior director of Scotts Professional Seed, so grass seed prices will continue to increase.
Half as many acres are harvested for bluegrass as five years ago, Turner says. The supply of perennial ryegrass is between 40 and 60 million pounds, and the amount of tall fescue is less than that, Turner says. In general, supply of ryegrass and tall fescue is good, and there have been significant increases in inventory of bluegrass and fine fescue. But a decline in housing starts has affected the amount of turf sold, and growers are selling less ryegrass for overseeding in the golf market.
“There’s a lot of pressure on growers to grow quality grass seed because the price is so high,” Turner says.
Luckily, there’s good news on the research front: new bluegrass hybrids, SeaSpray trial results, seed-yield potential, shade trials, and heat and drought tolerance in cool-season grasses.
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Glyphosate-tolerance testing
It takes 10 years to develop tolerance to certain rates of glyphosate, says Crystal Rose-Fricker, president of Pure-Seed. The company is working on glyphosate tolerance of tall and fine fescue, and still has a long way to go with bluegrass, she says.
“We’ve been spraying glyphosate for 15 years on the farm and still haven’t seen Poa resist the glyphosate applications,” she says. “Annual bluegrass produces so much seed it would be hard to kill everything with glyphosate. We’re not recommending spraying glyphosate with plants at eight weeks old. We want to make sure the seed is mature as possible.”
Among ryegrass varieties, Quicksilver turned gray after a glyphosate application, then recovered. On tall fescue, 12, 8 and even 4 ounces of glyphosate have a plant growth regulator effect, and it takes one month to see the complete effect. In a bluegrass/ryegrass mix, glyphosate won’t treat clover.
Kentucky bluegrass
Oregon experienced a cool, wet spring, which affected turf trials, so researchers added another half pound of fertilizer. They spoon-fed each plot to keep growth rates under control.
Fertilizer affects the color, density and disease susceptibility of bluegrass. Some varieties rust, others stay green. Some look good with only one pound of nitrogen. Thermal Blue Blaze has maintained a constant density, regardless of fertilizer quantities.
Pure-Seed seeks high seed production in bluegrass, especially Thermal Blue. Researchers also are looking at improvement in salt and drought tolerance, as well as traffic tolerance. After reducing watering frequency from weekly to biweekly, some bluegrass varieties still maintained color.
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Tall and fine fescue
Annual tall fescue trials are executed in 12 locations to examine performance in various climates. Researchers measure wear tolerance with a machine that simulates foot traffic on the turf. Silver Star is an older cultivar with good wear tolerance. Dynamic 2 and Gazelle 2 are successors to older varieties.
Researchers are working with fine fescue to see if ryegrass is viable in a mix. The fescue mixes seeded last fall are in a shaded grid plot, where there’s no traffic, and the trial will go on for two to three years. The plots are irrigated only when the grass wilts and the height of cut is set at three inches.
Researchers are getting a lot of calls from superintendents and architects about fine fescues because there’s a lot of talk about out-of-play areas where there’s little to no mowing or maintenance.
Agostino Guade, director of Scotts Turf-Seed Europe, says the European market is the most important for fine fescues. There are more than 40 varieties, and European buyers are seeking niche products.
Currently, the research focus is on glyphosate-tolerant fine fescue. Integrating glyphosate-tolerant fine fescue will be a huge learning curve for superintendents, Rose-Fricker says. She predicts superintendents will try it only after sod growers produce successful results.
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At Pure-Seed’s North Carolina farm, headed by Melodee Fraser, Ph.D., researchers are improving the summer performance of tall fescue, especially with brown patch and drought tolerance. They’re also making genetic resistance progress. Brown patch is easy to control with contact fungicides, but tall fescue is usually seeded in rough where fungicides aren’t applied often. Researchers can’t study brown patch and drought resistance in the same trial because a certain amount of water is needed to stimulate the disease.
Cold tolerance
Scotts is testing four new experimental bermudagrass varieties in several areas of the country. Cold tolerance and finer texture are two characteristics under focus. Transcontinental is a variety that has good cold tolerance and has been in the trial for 10 years. It’s being tested in a fairway in Kentucky.
Bernd Leinauer, Ph.D., extension turfgrass specialist at New Mexico State University, is working to improve cold tolerance of bermudagrass. In one area of New Mexico at a high elevation, bermudagrass stayed green for five months only. Leinauer is testing in New Mexico, screening for drought-, cold- and heat-tolerant grass because the area is in the transition zone. Soil pH in New Mexico is high – 7.8 to 9.2 – but precipitation is low, at eight to 10 inches a year.
“We have phenomenal native grasses in New Mexico that can survive without water, but they can’t handle the low mowing height and traffic of a golf course,” he says.
Great Scotts
Researchers at Scotts are testing intermediate ryegrass, which is a mix of annual and perennial ryegrass and isn’t as competitive or aggressive as annual ryegrass.
They’re also looking for ryegrass blends that perform well under duress, especially salt-tolerant ryegrass to overseed seashore paspalum. Herbicide tests on seashore paspalum have determined that Barricade causes browning at two weeks, and even earlier, so they’re looking for an herbicide to control bermudagrass in seashore paspalum.
Testing of bluegrass/tall fescue mixtures has revealed some bluegrass chokes tall fescue, but that can be overcome by overseeding bluegrass into tall fescue.
Colonial bentgrass has improved resistance to dollar spot and snow mold. Although brown patch can make Colonial troublesome, it’s brighter in color than creeping bentgrass and is underused on golf courses, says Eric Nelson, Ph.D., director of Scotts turf development. GCI
To view charts of turfgrass characteristics, click here.