ROOTED INRESEARCH


THE TURFGRASS CONTRIBUTIONS OF DR. RICK BRANDENBURG—BILLBUG EGG-LAYING-LARVAL SURVIVAL BEHAVIORS


By Cale A. Bigelow, PhD


I sit here penning this column as November transitions to December 2024 and it’s been quite the fall in the Midwest. As has been the trend in recent autumns, we had a very extended period of very dry weather. In fact, in Indianapolis, we were on track to have the driest October on record with less than 0.1 inch (0.254 cm) of rain for the month. We almost made the weather history leaderboard but then it rained on Halloween. While the record was not broken, the rain was much needed and turfgrasses throughout the region were grateful for the replenishment of some soil moisture going into late fall.


As I mentioned, these very dry autumn conditions have been an increasing trend in recent years and places like Southeastern Ohio into West Virginia did experience record dry conditions. Tese extended dry periods can have significant effects on plants and efforts to keep them healthy.


For most professional turf managers and even the do-it- yourselfer managing cool-season grasses, I emphasize that September and October are an optimal time of year for THE BIG THREE: “seeding, feeding, and weeding.” Without access to supplemental irrigation, the lack of liquid gold from the sky sure does make it difficult to be successful for anyone who planted new grass, overseeded an existing turf and/or applied fall nitrogen fertilizer with the hopes of strong improvements in density and green color.


While soil moisture content impacts seeding and feeding efforts, it also affects various insect pest populations, which is the topic I wanted to cover in this column. In addition, I wanted to highlight some of the contributions of turfgrass scientist/entomologist, and YouTube sensation, Dr. Rick Brandenburg who hosts “Turf, Bugs and Rock and Roll.” He recently wrapped up an impressive and


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impactful career at North Carolina State University. Dr. Brandenburg has family ties to the Midwest, growing up in Wabash, IN, and earning his Bachelor’s degree from Purdue University.


Here are some little-known fun facts about his rural hometown. Te city of Wabash claims to be the first lighted city in the United States (1880) and was where the Honeywell Corporation was originally founded in the same era. Wabash is a term that means "water over white stones" to the Miami-Illinois Indians, which was due to the magnificent clarity of a section of the Wabash River running over a bed of limestone bedrock, but I digress...


Dr. Brandenburg is well-known in the turfgrass industry for his pioneering and impactful applied research on insect pests affecting many turfgrass systems. He has also made numerous significant contributions to production agricultural crops like peanuts both here in the USA and in many international destinations such as Ghana and Malawi where peanuts are an important dietary source of protein.


Troughout Dr. Brandenburg’s career, his lab conducted research on numerous economically important insect pests for the Southeastern U.S. Tese include but are not limited to mole crickets, grubs, ground pearls, the sugar cane beetle, and various billbugs. For this article, I want to focus on billbugs (Figure 1) which are a complicated insect pest since their damage is often confused with issues like soil compaction, nutrient deficiencies, drought/summer stress, nematodes, a “summer disease,” or often attributed to other damaging insects like the white grub.


According to our turf entomologist here at Purdue, Dr. Doug Richmond, billbugs affect roughly half of all home lawns in this part of the Midwest making them one of, if not the most, common turfgrass-infesting insects.


TPI Turf News January/February 2025


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