Cover Story

Looking To the Future – Where Will the Turfgrass Industry Be in Ten Years?

The Future of Turfgrass Breeding

By Dave Han, Ph.D. Auburn University & Alabama Extension

Do you ever wonder what turfgrasses will look like in a few decades? Compared to the year 2000, we have more options than ever. New varieties stretch the boundaries of where we can grow and what we can do with turfgrasses. What is going to be the next great turfgrass? Will we ever get a grass that actually loves shade? How much drought / salt / disease / insect tolerance will future turfgrasses have? What is the future of turfgrass breeding?

Ever since people first began cultivating turfgrasses, they have been looking for better turfgrasses. In response, turfgrass breeders at universities and companies, working together with the seed and sod production industries, have delivered. Here in the Southeastern US, the benefits of the past 20 years of turf breeding are all around us.

Today’s putting greens are faster and smoother than ever thanks to new varieties of bentgrass and bermudagrass. Sports fields look great, stand up to more abuse, and recover faster than ever. Warm season grasses are being used farther and farther into the traditional cool season zone thanks to better cold tolerance. Seashore paspalum is making sports fields, fairways, and even greens and tees better in saline and shady environments. But we are really just starting to see the fruits of a decade’s worth of cooperative work.

Pictured: Newer varieties with superior cold tolerance are making it possible to take advantage of bermudagrass’ wear tolerance and fast recovery in more northerly locations. The lawn at the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C. recently transitioned to ‘Tahoma 31’ bermudagrass, with perennial ryegrass overseed to maintain color during the winter. The conversion was done in stages from 2019 – 2021. Tahoma 31 is a variety developed using funding from the USDA Specialty Crops Research Initiative multistate grant. (Photo by Dr. Dave Han)

A New Age in Turf Breeding

One of the most important events in modern turfgrass breeding at universities came in the late 2000s, when turfgrass researchers became eligible to apply to the United States Department of Agriculture’s Specialty Crops Research Initiative (SCRI). This opened up the possibility for turf breeding programs across the country to cooperate with each other to secure large amounts of funding for turf breeding to address important issues – primarily drought tolerance and salt tolerance. In 2010, some of the biggest turf breeding programs came together to submit a proposal entitled “Plant Genetics and Genomics to Improve Drought and Salinity Tolerance for Sustainable Turfgrass Production in the Southern United States.”

The proposed cooperative efforts by Texas A&M, Georgia, Florida, N.C. State and Oklahoma State to develop warm season grasses and was funded to the tune of $3.8 million over five years. The funding was renewed in 2015 for $4.3 million and again in 2019 for $7.96 million. In the second grant, the scope was widened to include other traits such as wear, traffic and herbicide tolerance, and to establish a molecular side to the project to find genetic markers to assist breeders in finding germplasm with desirable traits. The third grant continues the molecular work and also included money to fund research to quantify water savings in the varieties developed to increase their use over varieties that need more water. All of the grants provide money not only for marketing the varieties developed, but also fund field demonstrations, educational materials, field days, etc.

Another view of the lawn at the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C. which recently transitioned to ‘Tahoma 31’ bermudagrass, with perennial ryegrass overseed to maintain color during the winter. (Photo by Dr. Dave Han)

This was something of a game changer in the university turf breeding world. Not only did these grants increase cooperation between breeding programs at different universities, they also included money for demonstrating and promoting the improved turfgrass varieties with the goal of increasing adoption of new varieties. Although university turfgrass breeding programs have always found ways to publicize their releases, the new pool of money has made more demonstration projects possible and has increased awareness of new varieties even more.

Elbowing out older varieties?

The fact that new varieties from university breeding programs are being entered into the National Turfgrass Evaluation Program (with entrance fees partly funded by SCRI money) means that they are released with years of performance data from sites all over the country. This helps to speed acceptance and adoption of the new varieties. This trend should continue as the NTEP program continues to make its data reporting system more user-friendly.

A good example of rapid adoption is in bermudagrass. ‘TifTuf’ and ‘Tahoma 31’ are just two examples of many varieties released in the past ten years that have gained rapid widespread acceptance and use. Go back to varieties from 2011, and varieties such as ‘Latitude 36’ and ‘Northbridge’ are also very popular. We may even be past the point where good old ‘Tifway’ has been replaced, at least for high-end golf courses and sports fields. There will still be ‘Tifway’ on lawns for decades to come, but it is safe to say that we have seen the end of its dominance after more than half a century.

The same is true for zoysiagrasses. New varieties from both universities and from private companies have put a big dent in the demand for ‘Meyer’ and ‘Emerald.’ Again, the fact that the newest varieties come with years of NTEP and other testing, increases their acceptance rate.

Cool Season Breeders Get In the Game

Although warm-season breeders were the first to receive funding from SCRI, northern universities followed suit when they were awarded a $5.4 million grant in 2017. Titled Increasing Low-Input Turfgrass Adoption Through Breeding, Innovation, and Public Education, this project aims to increase the adoption of improved fine fescues in cool season turf in order to reduce inputs such as irrigation, fertilizer, and mowing. This project involves scientists at the University of Minnesota, Rutgers, Purdue, Oregon State, Wisconsin, and the USDA-ARS. This effort focuses on the lesser-used fine fescue species as alternatives, especially in lawns, as alternatives to traditional cool season species. The goal is a widespread reduction in inputs (again, especially irrigation and fertilizer) over a large acreage of turf.

What Does the Future Hold?

The prevailing traits that will characterize new turfgrasses in the foreseeable future is the ability to withstand more extreme environmental conditions while still providing superior performance. The original focus of the SCRI project was to produce more drought tolerant grasses, and while those have been delivered, drought stress and conflicts over water use are likely to increase over much of North America, so this will continue to be a strong point of emphasis for the foreseeable future.

Experimental zoysiagrass varieties in the National Turfgrass Evaluation Program (NTEP) being rated for spring greenup at Auburn, AL. NTEP evaluations play a key role in providing data to breeders about how their varieties perform in a wide variety of environments. (Photo by Dr. Dave Han)

The search for turfgrasses that can do more with less will extend to nutrients and shade too – in the future we will be growing varieties that require less fertilizer and less light than the ones we use now. This will expand the range of turfgrasses, as will the continued development of better tolerance to cold, salt, and other detrimental environments. The development of more dense and competitive grasses could also lead to less weed encroachment and less need for herbicides.

The new ultradwarf bermudagrass ‘Tif3D’ (seen here at TPC Sawgrass, Ponte Vedra Beach, FL) is an example product of the continued efforts of plant breeders across the southeast. (Photo courtesy of Dr. Brian Schwartz, University of Georgia)

The amount of money made available for sustained periods of time is important in plant breeding, which is not a fast process. The focus on environmentally sustainable traits, especially drought and salt tolerance, is producing more and more varieties that can be maintained with lower inputs. This saves both money and natural resources.

The research into finding genetic markers for traits that enhance resistance to environmental stress is bearing fruit. University breeders are learning how to use them to identify plants with these traits. This saves time by allowing breeders to skip some initial screening tests thus allowing plants into breeding programs more efficiently. This should mean that the flow of improved varieties will continue for many years to come. It should also increase the flexibility of breeding programs. As breeders learn more and more about the genetics of turfgrasses, they will be able to identify traits more easily – even traits that may only become desirable years from now as environments change. The research being done today will help to keep turfgrasses thriving under yet-unknown challenges.

The goal remains to make turfgrasses more sustainable by requiring less inputs. This in turn requires increasing their tolerance to environmental insults. This overarching goal will remain the same in the future, even if the inputs being focused on change. Turfgrass is an easy target for those who think that it is a resource hog, so there will always be a need for better varieties, and better awareness by the public of just what turfgrasses can do.

Improving drought tolerance is one of the top priorities of the Specialty Crops Research Initiative (SCRI) cooperative project among Southern turfgrass breeders. Here, bermudagrasses are evaluated for color retention under drought conditions at Stillwater, OK. (Photo courtesy of Dr. Yanqui Wu, Oklahoma State University)

REFERENCES

Gouveia, B. T., Rios, E. F., Nunes, J. A. R., Gezan, S. A., Munoz, P. R., Kenworthy, K. E., Unruh, J. B., Miller, G. L., Milla-Lewis, S. R., Schwartz, B. M., Raymer, P. L., Chandra, A., Wherley, B. G., Wu, Y., Martin, D. L., & Moss, J. Q. 2021. Multispecies genotype x environment interaction for turfgrass quality in five turfgrass breeding programs in the southeastern United States. Crop Sci. 61:5, 3080–3096. https://doi.org/10.1002/csc2.20421

Katuwal, K. B., Jespersen, D., Bhattarai, U., Chandra, A., Kenworthy, K. E., Milla-Lewis, S. R., Schwartz, B. M., Wu, Y., & Raymer, P. 2022. Multilocational screening identifies new drought-tolerant, warm-season turfgrasses. Crop Sci. 62:4, 1614–1630. https://doi.org/10.1002/csc2.20726

Schwartz, Brian M., Wayne W. Hanna, Lisa L. Baxter, Paul L. Raymer, F. Clint Waltz, Alec R. Kowalewski, Ambika Chandra, A. Dennis Genovesi, Benjamin G. Wherley, Grady L. Miller, Susana R. Milla-Lewis, Casey C. Reynolds, Yanqi Wu, Dennis L. Martin, Justin Q. Moss, Michael P. Kenna, J. Bryan Unruh, Kevin E. Kenworthy, Jing Zhang and Patricio Munoz. 2018. ‘DT-1’, a Drought-Tolerant Triploid Turf Bermudagrass. Hort- Science53(11):1711-1714. doi: 10.21273/ HORTSCI13083-18

USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture. Specialty Crop Research Initiative (SCRI) https://www.nifa. usda.gov/grants/programs/specialtycrop-research-initiative-scri