b'S T R A T E G Y A featured segment designed to help you in the realm of retail seed sales. Looking Beyond Yield, Yield and YieldTurfgrass cultivars are branching further than yield and into water efficiency.Joe Funk IT IS ALMOSTa clich that the three most impor-tant qualities a farmer looks for in a new field crop variety or hybrid are yield, yield and yield. Not so for new turfgrass cultivars. As seasonal weather patterns seem to be trending toward increased growing temperatures and greater annual variations, water avail-ability is becoming a criti-cal issue, particularly in the Western United States. Water use efficiency and drought tolerance are the new turf-grass benchmarks.Oregon is the worlds larg-est producer of cool-season forage and turf grass seed.A rainout shelter is used to cover and protect the grass from rainfall to test for drought resistance. Mild and moist winters and dry summers with little or nostantiated claims about a turf- ficult to do. That is when weformance data to support humidity from June throughgrass variety. Unlike most fieldstarted working on ways toimproved plant materials, September favor seed pro- crop performance evaluationshave third-party validation.the seed industry could raise duction. More than 390 seedwhere yield data is obtainedWe worked with universities.end-user awareness about conditioning plants locatedby weight, most turfgrass per- Some locations are not as dryvarietal differences in water in Oregons Willamette Valleyformance is subjective. Thereas we are here in Oregon. Weuse efficiency and drought prepare the seed for market.is a continual need to reducegot several university peopletolerance. The intended Besides the efforts that gothe amount of subjective- together to help and advise usresult was to reduce the into developing and trialingbased performance data. on how to quantify this.water needs of the managed new cultivars, there is alsoYears ago, we were reallyIn 2010, a group of turf- turfgrass environment while considerable effort devotedgetting tired of it when onegrass seed producers, market- preserving the vital ecological to helping seed growers andparty would say, We haveers and distributors set asideservices provided by green turfgrass users better under- brown-patch resistance, andtheir competitive differ- spaces. The need for objec-stand grasss water needs andthen all companies claim toences to form the Turfgrasstive data led to implementing drought tolerances.have brown-patch resistance,Water Conservation Alliancedigital image analysis with says Crystal Fricker, president(TWCA), a 501 c(3) non- Kenneth Hignight, NexGen Turfgrass Waterof Pure Seed Testing. Theprofit organization commit- Research, director of Research Conservation Alliance USDA National Turfgrassted to water conservation.and Doug Karcher, turfgrass Without objective perfor- Evaluation Program (NTEP)The common belief amongresearcher at the University of mance data, an unscrupuloushelps validate many things,the founding members wasArkansas. marketer can make unsub- but drought tolerance is dif- that by using objective per- We were then able to 46/ SEEDWORLD.COMOCTOBER 2020'