The Golf Industry show brings together people from all parts of the industry, and many companies take advantage of the opportunity to gather employees, distributors and customers for education and networking. For the past few years, I have been invited to a luncheon that started out as a thank-you to distributors for Seed Research of Oregon and has turned into a mini-seminar about the state of the turf seed industry and innovations in turfgrass seed research.
At this year's luncheon, the featured speakers were Richard Hurley, Ph.D., an adjunct professor at Rutger's University; Leah Brilman, Ph.D., SRO's director of research; and John Sorochan, Ph.D., an assistant professor in turfgrass science at the University of Tennessee.
Hurley started the presentations by explaining why he believes the new creeping bentgrass cultivars are on their way to being the standards of tomorrow, replacing older popular varieties like Penncross. Many turf breeders have been working to improve the quality of of the creeping bentgrass varieties that have been used on golf courses for decades. For example, at Rutgers, Stacy Bonos, Ph.D., has been screening creeping bentgrass germplasm for resistance to dollar spot for several years.
According to Hurley, the newer creeping bentgrass varieties have the best defense against Poa annua invasion: they are denser and more uniform. Penncross, for example, is not as dense and therefore, is more open to invasion. The newer cultivars Shark, Tyee, Authority and 007 are far less susceptible to Poa annua intrusion.
Susceptibility to diseases like leaf spot, snow mold, dollar spot and brown patch have also been longtime problems with creeping bentgrass. About 70 percent of the fungicides applied to turf are used to control dollar spot and brown patch. Hurley cited work by Rutgers professor Bruce Clarke, Ph.D., who has said that planting turfgrass that is less susceptible to those disease could reduce fungicide use by as much as 30 percent. Although several creeping bentgrass cultivars show high resistance to dollar spot, fewer (for example, Tyee, Penn G-6 and Declaration) have shown high resistance to brown patch.
For overall turfgrass quality of creeping bentgrass on greens, Tyee and 007 are among the varieties at the top of the NTEP test that Hurley believes show promise for becoming the new "old standards."
More information from the Seed Research luncheon will appear in a later blog and in GCM.
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