Brief Summary of Minutes of Annual Meeting

Recorded Minutes 2013 WERA-11 TURFGRASS MEETING ASA Tampa Florida U.S.A. Meeting called to order at 11:05 a.m. Dr. Greg Wiecko stated that state reports will be given orally and electronically an order of business will be the upcoming extension of the WERA 11 petition and possible development of Regional Project. State reports highlighting accomplishments impacts and outcomes were presented by twelve participants of the meeting. Business Issues: The new proposal for WERA-11 renewal will be needed in 2015. WERA-11 group discussed a possibly to transform Coordinating Committee to the Regional Project. Discussion on this subject will continue during the next annual meeting scheduled for June 23-25, 2014 in Salt Lake City, Utah. Meeting was adjourned at 5:15 p.m.

Outcomes, outputs and activities in participating states are presented below: California: Jim Baird (presented by Marco Schiavon): U.California turf program currently have 2 Ph.D. and 2 MS students in turf. Research addresses Festulolium hybrid development, salinity management and water use. Studies include 26 wetting agents on water use of turf. Primo TGR was best for postponing drought stress in Bermuda and Kikuyugrass. Other studies include drip vs sprinkler irrigation for turf established in either April or May. Other studies include the investigation od surfactants, nutrients and microbial amendments when bermudagrass turf was irrigated at 75% REF (ET0) 2x weekly. PoaCure appears to be safe on bentgrass in San Francisco area, but not sure yet for Coachella Valley. UC has hired a new breeder Predhi Sexina to work on tall fescue and perennial ryegrass, and also selecting for winter color retention in bermudagrass and bermudagrass. Dr. Baird is up for tenure in 2014. Robert Shortell is teaching at Cal Poly Pomona. Leah Brilman Seed Research of Oregon: DLF had bought SRO, Pickseed West, and Pickseed USA Leah will be head of developing 3 Brands for turf, and 1 brand line for forages as a direct employee of DLF. Her new title is Director of Product Materials and Technical Services. Breeding will continue with Steve Reid, Leah and Don Floyd. In Oregon seed is in short supply because of weather and lost acreage to other crops. Ryegrass yields are now up to 2500 pound per acre, KBG is 2000 lbs per acre when irrigated, and 850 lbs dry land. Yukon bermuda grass is now produced in the Columbian basin. For hard fescues, a field may last only 3 years at most, because of O.M. buildup without burning. Leah is breeding for plants that maintain higher seed yield from year to year, while marinating good turf quality. Oregon State University has a new turf professor on board Dr. Kowaleski (not present) Colorado: Yaling Qian. Colorado State University has 35 turf students undergraduate. Ned Tisserat will retire soon as plant pathologist. Research largely addresses carbon sequestration by turfgrass of various ages, and determining the carbon footprint of maintaining different turf surfaces and intensities of culture. The Golf Course Clubhouse is the biggest energy user, with the inclusion of golf carts. The largest energy sue on a golf course is mowing > electricity> irrigation. Putting greens can be heavy emitters of N2 gas. A rough is similar to that of a home lawn for N2 emission. The Aug/Sept issue of Agron. Journal has a paper on N2 emissions, and how this is affected by irrigation/soil moisture. The older the turf, the lower the nitrogen is required for basic turf. If extra N is added to an older turf, N2 emission increases. Yaling Quian is studying gray water use in 8 houses plumbed accordingly. Soil properties will be monitored for 10 years (depth = to 1 meter). Salt grass= Syn 2 generation is being evaluated for seed yield. Guam: Greg Wiecko. Greg has been the Department Director for 9 years and the advisor for WERA for the last five years. He is working on green roof systems. Roofs are comprised of mainly Zoysia tenufolia on a thick layer of sand and peat moss . Inside room temperatures are reduced significantly. New Mexico: Ryan Goss: Turf team at NMSU is Ryan, Berndt Leinauer and Natalie Goldberg (pathologist and Head of Extension). Ryan has 100 students in his intro to PLS class. Ryan has research which addresses gray water use in a residential house setting. Shower and clothes washer water is treated with U.V., than particle screening, more U.V., then can be stored for 100 days. The stored water is then used for irrigating around 2,000 sq. ft. lawn, and 50 landscape plants. For spraying Khakiweed (chafweed) a wetting agent is requires to penetrate the leaves, Without it, herbicide efficacy is almost nil. A LIGA experiment has shown that as increased nitrogen is given to turf, you can get better quality at lower levels of water applied, than otherwise. The LIGA included bermudagrass, buffalograss, KBG and perennial ryegrass. The bermudagrass SWI 2000 has been shown to have a low water use, or respond to lesser amounts of applied water. A three year study is under way to measure the effects of soil surfactants for water conservation on C3 and C4 grasses. Revolution soil surfactant with polycoated sands allowed bermudagrass to be grown successfully for longer periods of time when turf was irrigated at 50% REF ET(0). The Turf Conference may rotate to a 2 year event, rather than annual. NMSU is working with the Toro Soil sensors (wireless) for irrigation/applied water studies. Grasses for alleyways in grape vineyards include the use of hard fescue, tall fescue and chewings fescue. CSU school of mines, Berkeley, and Stanford and cooperators in a Bioreactor water membrane treatment trial (decentralized water treatment). Turf included in this system are tall fescue, bermudagrass, buffalo, saltgrass. The water is 15 ppm N-, and 1600 ppm salinity. All plots are SSI. Nebraska: Keenan Amundsen. 55 undergraduates, 9 grad students in turf. A new extension specialist starts Jan 14. There are 3 leaf spot diseases in buffalograss complex, being the fungi of Alternaria, Curvularia and Bi-polaris. Smut can be a problem in seed production of buffalograss, not false smut as once assumed. Other breeding objectives include , fall color retention, traffic tolerance, shade at 60% shade (5 lines show tolerance), chinch bug resistance, dormant seeding techniques. NEXGEN is capable of elucidating the Curvularia X Buffalograss sequencing. Sundance is a 6X seeded buffalograss variety coming out for release in 2014. Bluegramma clones from Nebraska are being evaluated for turf and as landscape feature plants. Utah: Paul Johnson. Paul has one graduate student, working on Poa genetics. Kelly Kopp is working on water conservation, and Shaun Bushman is working on salt tolerance in the following turfgrasses, KBG, perennial ryegrass, Alkaligrass. He is looking at mechanisms and gene expression. Plants obtained from Russia may be very salt tolerant. Shaun is also looking for bio-markers for various I.D. traits. LIGA studies have shown that chewings fescue performs better than hard fescue under drought induced from low applied water amounts. In Utah, there are at least 4 species of billbugs with very different life cycles, which dont match up to GDD models elsewhere. Kelly Kopp is irrigating turf using various forms of climate and soil sensors. Shaun has shown that drought tolerance and salt tolerance and not correlated in KBG, and he is developing genetic tests to compare like and dislike gene sequences between them. The salt is at EC 5.0 dS/m. Washington: Bill Johnston. Gwen Stanke has a new position teaching at Wala Wala Community College. He is working on projects dealing with, pythium on bentgrass, composts, and grass seed in terms of identifying KBG plants that produce stable seed yields without burning. When working with PoaCure, he found that when greens are at less than 5 % PA cover, that a single fall application, followed by a single fall application the next year worked best. He thinks reseeding interval may be 8 weeks or more. PoaCure is excellent in a seed production nursery, leaving 100% PA free rows with a slight reduction in seed yield. Bill has also tried Xenortate (amycarbizone) and Tenacity (mesotrione) for weed control in some production fields. In eastern Washington, there are more crane flies on turf than ever. The University may have an endowed chair position in turf, and is seeking co-funds from the seed industry to bolster such a position with research funds. Arizona: Dave Kopec: Mary Olsen is now ½ time in pathology and Mike McCLure will retire this June after 38 years as an applied nematologist. Salt and Drought Tolerance of Perennial Ryegrass: M. Pesssarakli. 15 clones of perennial ryegrass that originated from a golf course with saline water (Ec=3.5) were evaluated for salinity tolerance in solution culture. Two clones tolerated EC of 20 dS/m before leaf firing occurred 1 month later. Buffalograss tolerance to Tower, Topramezone and BASF 720. Tower was non injurious to buffalograss at 32 or 64 ounces of product /acre. BASF 720 caused injury for 2 weeks while BASF 670 caused injury for 3 weeks. For white grubs, DuPont PX had no control what so ever, while the least control for acelepryn treated turf was 69%, from the 8.0 ounce product/acre applied on June 1st, which was no different than that of the 8.0 ounce rate applied in May (74%) The greatest percent control was achieved at (100%) from acelepryn at the 16.0 ounce rate applied on June 1, and for 8.0 ounce rate applied in July. Diquat timing/rates and vertical mowing preparations for fairway overseeding enhancement. The 2 quart per acre rate produced the least amount of verdure removal, and produced fully acceptable overseed establishment. The label recommends 1 quart per care product rate for safety, without irrigation between the application and actual seed drop. Common bermudagrass and Princess bermudagrass tolerance to Spectcile (Indaziflam). Specticle was safe on common bermudagrass when applied to the same turfs in both the fall and at spring green up, when applied at rates of 3,6,8,9,12 ,16 or 18 ounces per acre. However, on Princess, Specticle caused long term injury at rates at 8 oz. product/acre and above, with long term recover required at the highest rate. New NTEP trials established 2013. NTEP bermudagrass greens trials. NTEP zoysiagrass / Seashore paspalum greens trials. NTEP fairway trials (vegetative and seeded). NTEP zoysiagrass trials (all vegetative) Poa control on bentgrass using PoaCure (methiozoline) at low and high elevation courses in Arizona. PoaCure was applied at 0.6 ounce product/M, as 4 repeat applications in the fall, 4 applications made in spring, or both fall and spring (8 applications total). Fall only programs produced 95% weed control at Tucson (low elevation) and at Payson (high elevation). Spring only applications produced significantly less weed control at both locations. When applied in both seasons, weed control was 97% in Tucson and 100% at Payson. Fall alone treatments did show either a return or appearance of new Poa annua in late spring at both locations. Katana is effective against this hard to control weed at 2 ounce/prod/acre from one single application. After one month after application, weed control was 100% at the 2 ounce prod/acre rate. The 1.0 ounce rate resulted in 70% weed control. Alternative grasses for desert turfs. A collection of Hilaria belangeri was acquired in 2011 and transplanted as a clonal evaluation trial at the USDA Plant Material Center in Tucson. This germplasm (135 clones) was selected from a low elevation location which was planted 17 years ago for seed production and thus, should have improved heat tolerance. Poor soil conditions (extreme shrinking/swelling) has compromised the trial, but a few number of plants have shown acceptable turfgrass growth habit. Mowing (1 ¾ inches - twice weekly) was stopped in July to save the trial altogether. If feasible, replanting the trial at another soil /sight should allow for greater clonal expression with mowing being the only stress and selection pressure. For ryegrass removal from bermudagrass, the use of penoxsulam (Sapphire) and halosulfuron + foramsulfuron + thiencarbazone (Tribute Total) in comparison to commonly used trifloxysulfuron (Monument), foramsulfuron (Revolver), flazasulfuron (Katana), and pronamide (Kerb) was observed. Applied 1 time on 06 May 2013, Sapphire at 1.5 pt/A was slower and less effective than Kerb. (Other demonstration studies showed Sapphire to be effective in slowly removing ryegrass with early May applications.) Tribute Total at 1.0 oz/A was nearly fast acting and highly effective as Katana at 1.0 oz/A and better and more consistent than Revolver at 17 oz./A. Nutsedge control strategies evaluated the timing and sequence of application of sulfentrazone (Dismiss CA) with sulfonylurea herbicides as MSMA use is restricted. An application of Dismiss before a single application of halosulfuron (SedgeHammer), sulfosulfuron (Certainty), flazasulfuron (Katana), or halosulfuron + foramsulfuron + thiencarbazone (Tribute Total) appeared to reduce nutsedge more than when an SU was applied first followed by Dismiss on regrowth. Sequential applications at a 5-week interval of SU herbicides applied in July and August were very effective. Evaluated efficacy and safety of topramezone (Pylex) and mesotrione (Tenacity) for removing bermudagrass from cool-season turfgrasses. Pylex alone and Tenacity + triclopyr effectively bleached and removed most bermudagrass with late summer applications in Poa/KBG/ryegrass turf. Pyle applied on mature goosegrass appeared to provide good control with bermudagrass bleaching that was temporary. Determined that spring applications of methiozolin (PoaCure), amicarbazone (Xonerate), and bispyribac-sodium (Velocity) were not effective against Poa annua. Xonerate at caused significant bentgrass phytotoxicity and death at 3 and 4 oz/A. Determined that MSMA was more effective than quinclorac-containing products (Drive XLR8, Solitare, OneTime, and Q4plus) against crabgrass. Continuing spring applications of dinotefuran (Safari) against pearl scale. Single and sequential applications in April and May dont appear to reduce populations or turf injury symptoms. Business Issues: The new proposal for WERA-11 renewal will be needed in 2015. WERA-11 group discussed a possibly to transform Coordinating Committee to the Regional Project. Discussion on this subject will continue during the next annual meeting scheduled for June 23-25, 2014 in Salt Lake City, Utah. Meeting was adjourned at 5:15 p.m.

not submitted as documents for this WERA-11 meeting.