Plant Growth Regulator and Soil Surfactants’ Effects on Saline and Deficit Irrigated Warm‐Season Grasses: I. Turf Quality and Soil Moisture

Autor: Bernd Maier, Matteo Serena, Rossana Sallenave, Bernd Leinauer, Marco Schiavon
Rok vydání: 2014
Předmět:
Zdroj: Crop Science. 54:2815-2826
ISSN: 1435-0653
0011-183X
DOI: 10.2135/cropsci2013.10.0707
Popis: A study was conducted at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, NM, from 2010 to 2012 to investigate the effects of deficit irri-gation on bermudagrass ( Cynodon dactylon L.) cultivar Princess 77 and seashore pas-palum ( Paspalum vaginatum Swartz) cultivar Sea Spray treated with either soil surfactants [Revolution (modified methyl capped block copolymer) or Dispatch (alkyl polyglucoside blended with a straight block copolymer)] or a plant growth regulator [Trinexapac-ethyl (TE); 4-(cyclopropylhydroxymethylene)-3,5-dioxo -cyclohexanecarboxylic acid]. Irrigation was applied daily at 50% reference evapotranspira-tion from either a sprinkler or a subsurface drip system with either potable (electrical conductiv -ity [EC] = 0.6 dS m 1 ) or saline (2.3 dS m 1 ) water. Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and visual ratings were determined monthly to assess stand quality and turf stress. Princess 77 treated with TE showed the highest quality and the highest NDVI (0.655) on 10 out of 15 sam-pling dates. Positive effects of TE applications were also observed on Sea Spray quality, NDVI, and fall color retention. Subsurface drip irriga-tion resulted in higher quality and NDVI during the third year of the study when compared with sprinkler irrigation. Salinity buildup in the root zone did not negatively affect visual quality of the tested warm-season species. Generally, sprinkler irrigation system and turf treated with Revolution promoted higher water distribution uniformity (lower standard deviations) than the other treatments. Further research is needed to investigate if greater drought tolerance of subsurface drip–irrigated turf is the result of increased water-use efficiency due to altered root morphology.M. Schiavon, Dep. of Botany & Plant Sciences, Univ. of California, Riverside, CA 95921; B. Leinauer, M. Serena, and B. Maier, Dep. of Extension Plant Sciences, New Mexico State Univ., Las Cruces, NM 88003; R. Sallenave, Dep. of Extension Animal Sciences and Natural Resources, New Mexico State Univ., Las Cruces, NM 88003. Received 27 Oct. 2013. *Corresponding author (leinauer@nmsu.edu).
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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