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Bermudagrass Cultivars AND Athletic Field Traffic
COLLID E N
ew bermudagrasses (both hybrid and improved vegetative selections of common bermudagrass) are being introduced into the turfgrass market, intended for use in athletic fields, home lawns, golf course fairways, and commercial landscaping. The grasses vary in their shade tolerance, resistance to various diseases, color, texture, and ability to tolerate traffic. For bermudagrasses used on athletic fields, traffic tolerance is one of the most important traits. So, in 2017, researchers at Auburn University installed a study to look at long-term traffic tolerance that evaluated six bermudagrass cultivars available commercially at the time under three levels of artificial traffic. This study evaluated the cultivars’ traffic tolerance when used as a typical high school athletic field.
By Beth Guertal, Professor, Auburn University Dave Han, Extension Specialist and Associate Professor, Alabama Extension and Auburn University In April of 2017 sod was laid from six different bermudagrass cultivars commonly used for southeastern US athletic fields. Cultivars were: Tifway, TifGrand, TifTuf, Latitude 36, NorthBridge (hybrid) and Celebration (vegetative common). The grasses were all obtained as sod cut from various commercial sod farms, and all sod was laid on the same day. Sod was laid in plots measuring 10 x 20 feet in size, with each main block of ‘cultivar’ replicated four times in a randomized complete block design. Traffic was applied as strip plots across each cultivar (each traffic strip was 3 feet wide and 10 feet long), imposed using an artificial traffic simulator. Three levels of traffic were applied to the bermudagrasses: none, low (3 American style football games per week) or high (5 American style football
TABLE 1. Shoot density (shoots per square centimeter) of bermudagrass managed as an athletic field as affected by traffic level or cultivar. The interaction of cultivar and level of traffic was never significant for this data. Level of traffic none (NT), Low (LT) (3 American style football games per week) or High (HT) (5 American style football games per week). Within each sampling date means followed by the same letter are not significantly different from each other at an alpha of 0.05. MONTH / YEAR OF DATA COLLECTION CULTIVAR
APRIL 2018
AUG 2019
JUNE 2020
Al ab ama Tu rf Tim es > >> Fa ll 2021
shoots per square centimeter
Tifway
6.6 b
3.6 bc
4.7 b
TifGrand
8.9 a
5.2 a
5.6 a
TifTuf
6.5 b
4.1 abc
4.2 b
Latitude 36
5.8 b
4.8 ab
4.5 b
NorthBridge
8.0 a
3.9 bc
4.5 b
Celebration
3.3 c
3.4 c
3.1 c
Since there were no significant cultivar x traffic interactions, the data for the dates shown was pooled from all cultivars for the given year to report the impact of traffic.
TRAFFIC LEVEL
26
No Traffic
6.5 a
4.6 a
4.6 a
Low Traffic
6.6 a
4.1 ab
4.3 a
High Traffic
6.4 a
3.8 b
4.3 a
