Abstract:
The turf varieties sold in
Romania are breeded in foreign countries
that are different in terms of climatic
conditions, and may not always perform as
well in conditions of extreme drought and
heat that often occurs in the summers of
eastern Romania. From this point of view,
trial testing of imported turf varieties in this
part of the country or another, throughout
the country, would be a necessary and
positive research especially if it would be
achieved before selling these varieties on
the romanian market, thus pleasing the
quality demands of the public and also
helping the breeders to optimize the range
of varieties for specific areas. In this
research we had the chance to test by trial,
for a period of two consecutive years, seven
varieties of kentucky bluegrass (KB) and
three of perennial ryegrass (PR) breeded in
the USA, the world market leader in
turfgrass varieties. Field trials were started
at a farm located nearby the city of Iasi, in
2005, consisting in randomized plots
replicated three times for statistical
interpretation of the data. The soil was a
chernozem soil type. Each plot had an area
of 4 m2. Seeding rate was 15g m-1 for
bluegrass varieties and 30g m-1 as
recommended by the breeding companies.
The weather conditions in the area are quite
rough for turfgrasses, with 520 mm of rain
annualy and an annual mean temperature
of 9.60C. The evaluation of turgrass overall
quality was done using the visual rating
scale used by the National Turfgrass
Evaluation Program from USA. This
organization is well accepted in more than
30 countries around the world, and the
rating scale is used by most of the turfgrass
breeders. Following results we learned that
ryegrass quality is affected by the prolonged
lack of water in a higher percentage than
bluegrass, by comparing the quality ratings
of these two varieties over a period of two
years, correlated with the climatic
conditions from the same time period. The
monthly ratings were used to calculate the
annual mean quality rating for each
individual variety, and the best quality was
observed in the year 2006, for varieties:
Nudestiny rated 6.5, Liberator rated 6.2 and Impact rated 6.1, all three belonging to Poa
pratensis species. This study proves the
importance of trial testing of imported turf
varities because of the following reasons:
there are large differences between turfgrass
species in terms of turf quality influenced
by climatic conditions but also there are
differences betwen varieties that belong to
the same botanical species, as we have seen
in the seven bluegrass varieties studied.
