مرکز منطقه ای اطلاع رساني علوم و فناوري - Investigations on The Quality Characteristics of Some New Turf Alternatives Under Mediterranean Climatic Conditions

Abstract :

Objective: Turf research is quite new in Turkey and the lack of turf management information and research based turf practices are the most significant handicaps in developing new and detailed turf research projects. During recent years basic information on turf production were provided by Ege University, Faculty of Agriculture,, Department of Field Crops pioneering turf research studies in the region and country, mainly by supports from TUBITAK in 1993. Main objective of this study was to introduce new turf grasses to the Mediterranean ecologies and to test their agronomical and particularly the quality performances of new accessions such as Cynodon spp., Paspalum spp., Zoysia spp. and traditional species. Material and Methods: Those newly introduced turf genus and species were grown in faculty’s research fields in the framework of another TUBITAK sponsored project and the quality characters of these turf grasses such as color, cover, weed invasion and evenness were tested in the field by plot experiments arranged in factorial randomized block design. In this study conducted for two years between the years 2013- 2014, turf grass alternatives like Cynodon dactylon (Bermuda Grass), Cynodon dactylonxCynodon transvaalensis (Hybrid Bermuda Grass), Paspalum vaginatum (Seashore Paspalum) and Zoysia japonica (Japanese Lawn Grass) as warm season turf grasses and conventional sports field mixture composed of cool season turf crops were investigated and turf quality traits determined to benefit in further research studies. Results: Results revealed that those newly introduced warm season turf grasses displayed very high quality performances(color, tillering, weed infestation, fast growth, etc.,) particularly in summer seasons under the Mediterranean ecological conditions, although conventional sports field mixture (Traditional alternative), deteriorating in second year, showed very limited quality performance. The highest values were found as 8.28(color), 8.89(Cover) and 4.46(Weed invasion) in Hybrid Bermuda Grass whereas the lowest values were determined in the conventional sports field mixture as 7.24 and 3.23 except for the color character, respectively. Evenness characteristic tested didn’t give a meaningful result under the experimental conditions. Conclusion: Remembering the hot and dry weather conditions of Mediterranean climatic parameters in summer, it was concluded that cool season turf grasses were in trouble to manage their water balance (budget), mainly due to their unfavorable physiological peculiarities known as C3 photosynthesis procedure. Whereas warm season turf grasses performed very well by their favorable photosynthesis traits known as C4 type photosynthesis which gives highly positive response to the hot and dry weather conditions of Mediterranean climate.