Evaluation of Bermudagrass for Drought Resistance.

Bermudagrasses are the most commonly used turfgrasses in the Southern and transition zone areas of the United States. It is important to improve turfgrass drought resistance for water savings and persistence under drought stress. A number of experimental and commercially available turf bermudagrasses were evaluated for drought resistance at Stillwater, Oklahoma during 2016. Duplicate trials were conducted on each entry. These trials were maintained under no irrigation and no rainfall upon the start of a dry down cycle. A waterproof tarp was used to exclude rainfall from each trial. Entries were evaluated for turf quality (TQ), leaf firing (LF) and normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) at least once each week during the dry down cycle. Digital image analysis (DIA) was used to assess live green cover each week. Recovery was assessed using TQ and DIA on a weekly basis during the post-drought recovery process. The drought resistance of the various entries will be reported in this poster presentation. Results of this research will guide turfgrass developers in decision making concerning release of entries from the various turfgrass development programs at each cooperating university. This work was funded in part by a USDA NIFA Specialty Crops Research Initiative grant.