Research

Photos: Figure 2 provided by Dominic Petrella, all others provided by Karl Danneberger

Brushing stress away, or causing it?

We have conducted a series of putting green-brushing studies over the last few years, spearheaded by one of our former graduate students, Gail Gu, for her Master’s degree thesis. In that time, technical advances in brushing attachments/units have changed how ...

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Photos: Murphey Coy

Manipulating microbial ecology

January 25, 2018 By , and
Water and fertilizer use for turfgrass and horticultural commodities is a local, state and national concern for these industries. Water availability for irrigation has decreased in recent years because of greater demands from agriculture, industry, domestic uses and climate variability. ...

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Photo: Trevor Stacy

Putting the pH in pH-ungicide mixology

January 8, 2018 By , and
Fungicides are mixed with water and applied as a dilute spray to control diseases on golf course turf. Although published reports show that water quality can influence the performance of certain herbicides, evidence of similar effects on fungicide efficacy is ...

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Clark Talks Turf: Rolling off the greens to save on dollar spot

December 14, 2017 By and
Jay Popko is a research associate in the turfgrass pathology lab at the University of Massachusetts, where he leads field and laboratory research on rolling, fungicide efficacy and dollar-spot resistance to fungicides. You may reach Jay at jpopko@umass.edu for more ...

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Photo: BASF

Monarch (butterflies) of the links

December 1, 2017 By
Monarch butterfly populations have been declining in the United States since the late 1990s. One of many factors contributing to the decline is the shrinking number of milkweed plants, which are critical to their reproduction cycle. The monarch migration starts ...

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Controlling annual bluegrass where the buffalo roam

November 9, 2017 By
Annual bluegrass (Poa annua L.) control has been thoroughly researched in cool-season turf east of the Mississippi River, but little research has been done in the northern Great Plains. Growing conditions, weather, desired species, as well as biotypes of annual ...

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