Wednesday, November 7, 2007
268-15
'Patriot' Bermudagrass Rooting as Affected by Various Rootzone Amendments.
Brian Bornino, Cale Bigelow, and Jared Nemitz. Purdue University, Lilly Hall of Life Sciences, 915 W. State Street Office #2414-D, West Lafayette, IN 47907
High value sand-based stadium athletic fields often require annual renovation to repair heavily worn areas. This process is most quickly accomplished by planting sod which must quickly produce a deep, dense root system in order to ensure a safe, stable field. Little information exists regarding the rooting patterns of a new bermudagrass cultivar, ‘Pat riot’, which is being widely planted throughout the transition zone. The rooting of 15 cm diam. sod plugs was determined for six sand rootzone treatments in 30 cm deep slanted mini-rhizotrons filled with a medium-coarse calcareous sand to determine which management practice would produce the deepest and densest roots. The rootzone amendment/fertilizer treatments were: surface applied urea every 10 days, a complete starter fertilizer incorporated into the upper 5 cm, 10 % zeolite (v/v) incorporated into the upper 10 cm, starter fertilizer + zeolite, surface applied urea + incorporated starter and zeolite which were all compared to an unfertilized, unamended control. Rooting depth and density was determined using acetate tracings which were analyzed using electronic scanning software and rootmass was determined at the termination of the experiment. Root density expressed as a percentage of roots on the tracings were highest for the surface applied urea, 25.9 %, and least for the incorporated starter fertilizer and untreated control, 12.6 and 11.9 %, respectively. Sand amended with zeolite produced the most roots, 9.91 g, while the sand amended with the starter fertilizer alone and three-way combination produced the least with 4.88 and 4.09 g, respectively.