traits we’re evaluating is an ideal fit,” he says. “In many areas, I see two distinctly different needs between the landscape/home lawn and the sports field/golf segments. Te interesting question—is there enough difference to develop grasses specifically for both segments?”
He points to the shade factor as a much greater issue for the home lawn/landscape with trees than for a sports complex–with the exception of stadium fields where the stands can cast long shadows. Martin adds, “For sports fields and golf courses, the turf has to not only look good, especially if an event will be televised; it has to play well; and it has to stand up to wear and recover quickly from it. Tat takes a grass that is dense, sturdy, and aggressive enough to provide the growth, regrowth and recovery. For a major portion of the lawn and landscape market the turf just needs to ‘be there’ and look good. Te ideal landscape bermudagrass would produce good, solid turf cover under a number of stresses; withstand drought without wilt or discoloration; and not be overly aggressive so it wouldn’t grow into the landscape beds or over the hardscape and need so much edging or trimming.
More to Come OSU has much in the pipeline and even more to come. To develop new cultivars, the OSU breeders/geneticists use molecular marker technology and high through put to produce and screen crosses among hundreds of genotypes, narrowing the selection to several dozen lines. Tese are given to researchers at the Turf Grass Center to plant out and grow under different management programs tailored to specific market segments. From the thousands of experimental lines only a handful of elite lines emerge to be tested in NTEP trials around the U.S. From that handful emerge the top notch performers that are commercially released.
Workshops are a prime resource allowing Dr. Dennis Martin to provide information to, and receive feedback from, different user groups. Photo by OSU-Steve Batten
“Te professional—golf superintendent, sports field manager, parks superintendent—recognizes the cost savings in maintenance over time and won’t have trouble spending more for the proprietary variety. Te homeowner is extremely cost conscious and looks for immediate value. It’s typically more difficult to sell a high performance grass to the consumer than to the educated professional.”
Te sod producer’s perspective may be different than that of the end users, notes Martin. “Growing fewer cultivars may be a better choice for them. It’s expensive to develop the ground and keep it in pedigree stock; the more varieties the greater the headaches and the greater the potential for cross-contamination; and they have to be concerned with cash flow. Te question—what percentage of increased sales and profits justifies growing different grasses for different markets?”
50
Martin says, “We’ve adopted advanced screening technology and techniques in the field, too. We’ve been involved with digital image analysis (DIA) since it was introduced. Our traffic simulators are adapted to mimic sports or golf activity and we measure and analyze recovery from it. Team members have, and will be, using shade for screening grasses and measuring shade tolerance. Our team members work with rain out shelters to gauge reaction to, and recovery from, drought. We test irrigation alternative products and protocols. We screen new varieties for tolerance to the broad spectrum of herbicides, old and new.” Since 1999, Dr. Nathan Walker, OSU turf team plant pathologist, has been working on the biology and control of spring dead spot (SDS) disease (among other areas). Martin says, “Tis work is performed in the lab under controlled conditions as well as in the field. Field work has included screening bermudagrass varieties for resistance/tolerance to SDS. Notably, Dr. Walker has inserted a fluorescing gene in the pathogen that causes the pathogen to fluoresce under controlled lab conditions. Tis allows tracking of exactly which tissues the disease- causing organism is attacking, which is beneficial in a number of studies. Professor Walker also has developed a rapid screening technique for SDS that has high through put for screening for SDS resistance. It is important to note that our varieties have improved resistance to SDS but are not immune to the disease.”
Every new introduction brings challenges and learning opportunities, notes Martin. “One of the big lessons with Midlawn and Midfield in the early 1990s was the need to not only test and locate cold-hardy, high quality, improved clonal bermudagrasses, but also to effectively quantify sod tensile strength. While I’d been told they would be fine, our licensees reported they didn’t hold together very well. Tat was the limiting factor for the success of those grasses in the trade.”
Tough others had developed sod tensile strength testing units with actuators (stretching units), it was Martin and his students who developed a simple qualitative
TPI Turf News September/October 2016
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68