The Turfgrass Science team from the University of Minnesota was well-represented at this year’s ASA-CSSA-SSSA Annual Meetings held on October 29 - November 1, 2023 in St. Louis, MO. Two people gave oral presentations and three people presented posters. Below is a listing of all the oral presentations and posters along with the presentation abstracts and the poster PDF files.
Oral presentations
Cultivating New Opportunities for Turfgrass Science Education in Minnesota
Presenting Author - Michael Barnes; co-authors Ileana Campagna, Becky Haddad and Eric Watkins
Abstract
Turfgrass dominated managed urban landscapes (e.g., parks, yards) are a central component of urban ecosystems in Minnesota, the United States, and around the world. These landscapes can require a significant amount of labor, management, and research work in order to maximize ecosystem services. Despite the importance of these landscapes and the variety of associated careers available, there remains a significant deficit of workers as well as students interested in these critical landscapes, which is only projected to grow in the future. One area which remains understudied is how often managed urban landscape curricula are even present in undergraduate majors. The current study utilized a systematic examination of higher education institutions in the state of Minnesota to assess the state of managed urban landscape curricula (MULC) across multiple disciplines. Overall, managed urban landscape curricula was rare, making up an estimated 0.4% out of all courses reviewed (~51,000). However, there are significant opportunities to expand the reach of MULC into a broad range of disciplines that could help expose a greater number of undergraduate students to these critical landscapes and foster an interest in careers related to them.
Progressing Towards Biocontainment in Perennial Ryegrass with Improved Transformation Protocols
Presenting Author - Jonathan Cors
Abstract
A new biocontainment method named Engineered Genetic Incompatibility (EGI) has been proven to work in both yeast and Drosophila melanogaster. It utilizes CRISPR activators to overexpress integral genes leading to plant death as a result. As such, the only necessity for EGI to work within a species is the ability for CRISPR activators to work as well as having genes that when overexpressed can cause death. This biocontainment method has great potential to work in turfgrass, allowing for the further introgression of other beneficial genes. This talk will cover several experiments progressing towards this goal of EGI in turfgrass that have been conducted in the turfgrass species perennial ryegrass.Largely it will cover several aspects of perennial ryegrass transformation protocols have been tested and optimized, such as improvements in published callus culture protocols and testing of new protocols utilizing embryonic genes such as Wus and Bbm to produce embryonic callus. While these experiments have been conducted with EGI in mind, all of them can be utilized for general turfgrass transformation.
Posters
Cool-Season Turfgrass Species Mixture and Mycorrhizal Inoculation for Improved Drought (Poster PDF)
Presenting Author - Jillian Turbeville; co-author Florence Sessoms
Optimizing Methods for Turfgrass Metabolomics (Poster PDF)
Presenting Author - Katrina Freund; co-authors Adrian Hegeman and Eric Watkins
Twin Cities Assessment of Turfgrass and Bee Lawn Flora (Poster PDF)
Presenting Author - Ryan Schwab; co-authors Eric Watkins, Jillian Turbeville, Dominic Christensen, Susannah Lerman and Adam Kay