Perennial ryegrass

Watering Wisdom Webinar series

The goal of this webinar series is to help homeowners have healthier lawns and more efficient irrigation systems.

By Florence Sessoms

In the first part of this series, I described what arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) are and how they can benefit plants. In this post, I will discuss how AMF might benefit turfgrasses. Cool-season and warm-season grasses are both able to be infected with mycorrhizal fungi. A quick literature review showed that several benefits of AMF were observed with turfgrasses such as improved biomass, nutrient content, decrease in weed incidence and disease severity (Table 1). 

Summary of study

Plants of 300 wild and landrace accessions from the National Plant Germplasm System (NPGS) and a collection at Rutgers University were tested in two field environments for winterhardiness (as measured by tiller survival) and other turf traits. The field environments were at Becker and St. Paul, MN. The traits measured were seedling vigor, tiller survival in 2005 and 2006, spring growth in 2005 and 2006, summer and autumn turf quality, color, leaf texture, crown rust incidence, growth habit and spreading vigor.

2019 Data

All links below are .pdf files

• Management of 2019 Trials

Creeping bentgrass

• 2014 Creeping bentgrass NTEP green

Kentucky bluegrass

• 2017 Kentucky bluegrass NTEP

Perennial ryegrass

By Joan Barreto Ortiz

I am a new graduate student on the Plant Breeding/Molecular Genetics track in the Applied Plant Sciences program at the University of Minnesota. I did my undergraduate degree in Agronomy at the Universidad del Tolima in Colombia, where I am originally from. One of my main objectives for my current project is to develop novel systems that attempt to understand the genetics of seed shattering—the seed loss due to detachment from the spike—in perennial ryegrass (Lolium perenne L.) seed production and strategies that can be used to breed for better seed retention.

By Eric Watkins

By Dominic Christensen