For many superintendents, access to adequate supplies of water for irrigation is a top concern, and for everyone else, it eventually will be.
So, imagine a grass that looks as verdant after almost two months without water as it does following a spring rain. Growing grass that requires less water — much less water — than what superintendents are accustomed to managing is the goal of turfgrass breeders at the University of California Riverside.
As scientists strive to develop drought-tolerant grasses that will meet the needs of professional turf managers in arid climates, breeders at UCR have tested almost 5,000 experimental varieties since the university reestablished its turf-breeding program in 2012.
According to information from the university’s recent turfgrass field day, several experimental lines currently undergoing drought trials in Riverside are showing promise, including one that exhibited exception drought stress, retaining green color 53 days without irrigation.
UCR researchers also are looking at specific irrigation strategies that will help superintendents use less water.
“We’re trying to develop grasses that use less water,” UC Cooperative Extension turfgrass specialist Jim Baird, Ph.D., said in a UCR news release.
“We’re the leaders in that area of trying to identify just kind of a total programmatic approach to saving water.”
UCR is the breeding program that gave the market Coachella Bermudagrass in late 2024. Licensed for sale through West Coast Turf, Coachella can use as much as 25 percent less water than many other Bermudagrasses and 65 percent less than many fescues, according to UCR research.
Although saving water is a goal for turf breeders at UCR and elsewhere, other factors, such as turf quality and playability are equally, if not more important. That point is illustrated by the fact that it took thousands of trials over a dozen years until Coachella became the first commercially viable Bermuda variety to come out of the UCR breeding program.
In less than two years, Coachella has been popping up on golf courses throughout Southern California.
Researchers in Riverside currently are evaluating about 2,000 Bermudagrass genotypes, according to Christian Bowman, a UCR postdoctoral researcher who is UCR’s warm-season turfgrass breeder. From that lot, all but 10 or so might be weeded out before the next wave of official trials begins.
“The goal of the breeding program is to combine as many positive traits as we can into one grass,” Bowman said in the release.
“If we have grasses that aren’t as good as or better than what’s already available, there’s no point in releasing them.”
