To help find answers to what some parks and ovals managers describe as a ‘dry argument’, The University of Western Australia (UWA) Institute of Agriculture and its Turf Research Program is assessing wetting agents, turf varieties and mowing heights at its Shenton Park Field Station.
The new project, funded by the WA turf industry and Horticulture Australia Limited (HAL), is addressing two main topics: renovation techniques for thatch removal on a diverse set of soft-leaf buffalograss cultivars and the influence of mowing height on water use by four species (soft-leaf buffalo, couch, kikuyu and zoysia).
The UWA Shenton Park Field Station experiments will run until mid 2011.
"The influence of mowing height on water use and drought tolerance is still being debated, so we also have an experiment assessing how water use changes in four warm season turf species under three mowing heights," says Professor Tim Colmer of UWA’s School of Plant Biology.
HAL, in partnership with local and state government, plus the WA turf industry, is also funding the UWA Turf Research Program investigating how to manage soil water repellency in turfgrass.
According to Associate Professor Louise Barton of UWA’s School of Earth and Environment, turf managers are under relentless pressure to decrease the amount of water applied to parks and gardens and the result was an increasing incidence of soil water-repellency in these areas.
"Soil water repellency decreases water use efficiency by causing irrigation water to unevenly infiltrate the soil surface, bypassing a proportion of the turfgrass roots, causing localised death of turfgrass," she says.
Applying wetting agents is one remedial approach being investigated by the UWA team.
"UWA research here at Shenton Park has already demonstrated that applying a wetting agent in spring can decrease water repellency in summer and consequently improve the overall appearance of the turfgrass," Barton says.
"However, not all wetting agents are equally effective and consumers should be aware that the amount of active ingredient in wetting agents varies between brands.
"Maximising the amount of active ingredient applied appears to decrease the incidence and severity of water repellency."
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