Nancy Ehlke

By Jillian Turbeville

Last year I had the privilege of traveling up to northern Minnesota, nearly ten miles south of the Canadian border, once every month between May and October. These road trips took me six hours from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities campus to the quaint town of Roseau. Best known for its snowmobile manufacturing and as a destination for hunting and fishing, Roseau stands out more uniquely to me for its agricultural aspects. As a graduate student, I am invested in learning about this unique ecoregion that provides ideal conditions for cool-season turfgrass seed production.

Learn more about our research! A new, open access article by Garett Heineck, Nancy Ehlke, and Eric Watkins has been published in Geosciences & Environment. Their study found that perennial ryegrass grown for turfgrass or seed in the Upper US Midwest will likely not face many tradeoffs when breeding for both aesthetics and seed yield.

Learn more about our research! A new, open access article by Joan Barreto Ortiz, Candice Hirsch, Nancy Jo Ehlke and Eric Watkins has been published in Plant Methods. This paper describes a method to quantify turfgrass inflorescence properties using computer imaging to provide a faster and less subjective way to phenotype, which can aid in plant breeding.

Learn more about our research! A new, open access article by Florence Breuillin-Sessoms, Dominic Petrella, Nancy Ehlke, Donn Vellekson and Eric Watkins has been published in the journal Crop Science. This article discusses the research in which several cultivars of Chewings, hard and strong creeping red fescue were interseeded with spring wheat to examine the potential of this method for seed production in northern Minnesota. Unfortunately, this cropping system did not seem optimal for fine fescue seed production so more research is needed. 

Learn more about our research! Three research articles from our group have been published in the September/October 2021 issue of Crop Science.

Check out our team’s latest efforts in educating the public about our work. Some of our team are featured in an article in CFANS News!

Eric Watkins and Nancy Jo Ehlke were interviewed in an article, Seed money, on grass seed production in northern Minnesota.

Did you know that the University of Minnesota conducts research on turfgrass seed production in northern Minnesota? If you are interested in learning more, our website now has information on Seed Production Research at Magnusson Research Farm.

The Turfgrass Science team from the University of Minnesota gave two presentations and presented two posters at this year’s ASA-CSSA-SSSA Virtual Annual Meeting. Below is a listing of the abstracts, along with links to the poster PDF files.

Learn more about our research! Two new research articles from our group have been published in Crop Science.