08/01/2000

AU Turfgrass Research Will Help Ensure Smoother Putting for Alabama Golfers

AUBURN, Ala.—To most golfers, bentgrass putting greens are the ultimate. Many will go out of their way to play at courses that offer the premium, velvety greens.

Golf course management teams know this. That's why, in north and central Alabama, bentgrass greens are found on dozens of courses.

But there's one big obstacle to growing bentgrass in Alabama: It is a cool-season grass that can't stand the heat. In Alabama, the land of blistering hot summers, keeping bentgrass greens alive and looking good in the sweltering heat is a major challenge.

That high-pressure task could grow a bit easier for golf course superintendents in the future, thanks to research now under way at Auburn University's Turfgrass Research Unit in south Auburn. In the new two-year project, researchers hope to define the best formula for helping bentgrass keep its cool.

The bentgrass cooling study was one of numerous research projects featured recently during the 2000 Turfgrass Field Day at the research unit. More than 120 turf and sod professionals from throughout Alabama attended the event to glean valuable information vital to their industry.

With bentgrass, major problems occur when the air temperature is at 90 degrees or above and the soil temperature tops 77 degrees. At that point, the roots and shoots simply stop growing. Clearly, Alabama's hot, humid days and warm, muggy nights prove especially trying for greenkeepers.

The bentgrass study, led by AU agronomist Beth Guertal, is a scientific analysis of two cooling methods frequently used with bentgrass: syringing and fans.

Syringing involves applying a light mist of water over the hottest portions of grass in the heat of the day in order to moderate the temperature of the grass. But while syringing may immediately lower the surface temperature of the bentgrass several degrees, previous studies have shown that the cooling effect only lasts about 15 minutes.

"The water isn't what cools the grass," Guertal said. ""Evaporation does that, and the best way to get evaporation is to run fans. The wind moving on the turf breaks up the humid layer of air on the surface of the grass, and that enhances the evapotranspiration cooling process in the grass."

On the test plots in Auburn, special probes constantly monitor the grass temperature to signal when it's time to crank up the cooling processes. During the study, Guertal and fellow researchers will investigate the performance of bentgrass with syringing only, with fans only or with a combination of the two, in terms of efficiency and effectiveness. The bentgrass plots under the different cooling methods will be examined for quality, color, root lengths, shoot density, disease pressure and other factors. Preliminary results should be available at next year's Turfgrass Field Day.

Besides its notoriety as a fast, top-notch playing surface, bentgrass gives golf courses the added advantage of year-round greenness.

"Superintendents are willing to devote painstaking efforts to grooming bentgrass because, in the winter, it presents a rich, green color, compared to the dormant brown of bermudagrass greens, which must be overseeded with a cool-season grass to maintain a year-round green color," Guertal said. "Plus, once you've pulled it through those high-stress summer months, bentgrass is relatively easy to maintain."

Still, its heat sensitivity explains why, in Alabama, you won't find bentgrass on a golf course from Montgomery southward.

Elsewhere on the Turfgrass Research Unit's rolling hills of lush-green, closely mown grasses, researchers at the field day presented updates on a number of other projects focusing on such areas as weed and disease control, fertilizing options, and performance trials on different varieties of bentgrass and bermudagrass.

Attendees also were introduced to the new Distance Disease Diagnostic Center, a digital imaging process that cuts diagnostic turnaround time from an average of four days when physical plant samples are sent through postal mail to a single day.

In the system, county Extension agents use digital cameras, microscopes, computers and the Internet to submit images of diseased plants for rapid evaluation and diagnosis. That quick response should help save millions of dollars annually in lost or damaged crops.

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News from:

Office of Ag Communications & Marketing

Auburn University College of Agriculture
Alabama Agricultural Experiment Station
3 Comer Hall, Auburn University
Auburn, AL 36849
334-844-4877 (PHONE) 334-844-5892 (FAX)

Contact Jamie Creamer, 334-844-2783 or jcreamer@auburn.edu

08/01/00