Turfgrass Science

By Kim Tiber

Previous work under the Icebreaker study has shown that annual bluegrass on golf putting greens is highly susceptible to winter kill or damage due to ice encasement. During the winter of 2022-2023 carbon dioxide levels were above the upper limit of the sensor for an extended period.  

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.

Save the date for the annual Minnesota Turf Seed Council and University of Minnesota Grass Seed Meeting! This year's meeting will be Wednesday, February 26 from 8:30 a.m.

Learn more about our research! A new, open access article by Michael Barnes, Joshua Friell, Bryan Runck, Douglas Soldat, Eric Watkins, and Chengyan Yue has been published in Crop Science. The authors propose the adoption of a new framework – social–ecological–technological systems (SETS) – for turfgrass to improve research collaboration. 

By Paige Boyle

This past summer, I completed my first season of MSP LTER Pollinator Habitat data collection. I spent 3 weeks in the Twin Cities with my undergraduate helper from the University of St. Thomas, Eli, identifying plants in home lawns throughout the metro (Figure 1), getting rained on, and talking to homeowners about their yards.