Fine fescues (Festuca spp.) may provide acceptable turf quality and playability on golf course fairways with lower irrigation inputs. Information on fine fescue fairways is limited and these species are not widely used as fairway turfgrass in the United States. The objective of this project was to evaluate the green cover of fine fescue species as fairway turfgrass under an acute drought and access their ability to recover. Twenty‐five mixtures were developed with a simplex‐centroid design using ‘Treazure II’ Chewings fescue [Festuca rubra ssp. commutata (Thuill.) Nyman], ‘Beacon’ hard fescue [Festuca trachyphylla (Hack.) Krajina], ‘Navigator II’ strong creeping red fescue (Festuca rubra ssp. rubra Gaudin), ‘Shoreline’ slender creeping red fescue [Festuca rubra ssp. litoralis (G.F.W. Meyer) Auquier], and ‘Quatro’ sheep fescue (Festuca ovina L.). Experiments were seeded in fall 2014 at both St. Paul, MN, and Madison, WI. After 10 mo of establishment, rainout shelters were used to employ a 60‐d drought on each trial during summer 2015. Plots were not trafficked. Data collected included percentage green cover as determined by digital image analysis. Analysis of variance indicated significant differences in mixture treatments, but means separation with Fisher's protected LSD showed that many monocultures performed generally similar to seed mixtures. A marginal effects summary revealed no differences among individual species, with one exception. Sheep fescue and slender creeping red fescue, when in the same mixture, had a negative interaction effect for recovery after drought. This interaction was significantly lower than the all five species coefficients included in the model, based on a 90% confidence interval. Overall, this study found that fine fescues are able to survive a 60‐d drought period under North Central US summer conditions.
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As the drought conditions persist in California and water continues to become less available, the development of methods to reduce water inputs is extremely important. Therefore, improving irrigation water use efficiency and developing water conservation strategies is crucial for maintaining urban green infrastructure. This two-year field irrigation project (2018–2019) focused on the application of optical and thermal remote sensing for turfgrass irrigation management in central California. We monitored the response of hybrid bermudagrass and tall fescue to varying irrigation treatments, including irrigation levels (percentages of reference evapotranspiration, ETo) and irrigation frequency. The ground-based remote sensing data included NDVI and canopy temperature, which was subsequently used to calculate the crop water stress index (CWSI). The measurements were done within two hours of solar noon under cloud-free conditions. The NDVI and canopy temperature data were collected 21 times in 2018 and 10 times in 2019. For the tall fescue, a strong relationship was observed between NDVI and visual rating (VR) values in both 2018 (r = 0.92) and 2019 (r = 0.83). For the hybrid bermudagrass, there was no correlation in 2018 and a moderate correlation (r = 0.72) in 2019. There was a moderate correlation of 0.64 and 0.88 in 2018 and 2019 between tall fescue canopy minus air temperature difference (dt) and vapor pressure deficit (VPD) for the lower CWSI baseline. The correlation between hybrid bermudagrass dt and VPD for the lower baseline was 0.69 in 2018 and 0.64 in 2019. Irrigation levels significantly impacted tall fescue canopy temperature but showed no significant effect on hybrid bermudagrass canopy temperature. For the same irrigation levels, increasing irrigation frequency slightly but consistently decreased canopy temperature without compromising the turfgrass quality. The empirical CWSI values violated the minimum expected value (of 0) 38% of the time. Our results suggest NDVI thresholds of 0.6–0.65 for tall fescue and 0.5 for hybrid bermudagrass to maintain acceptable quality in the central California region. Further investigation is needed to verify the thresholds obtained in this study, particularly for hybrid bermudagrass, as the recommendation is only based on 2019 data. No CWSI threshold was determined to maintain turf quality in the acceptable range because of the high variability of CWSI values over time and their low correlation with VR values.
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