No-burn Kentucky bluegrass on the way from WSU
Published 9:00 am Tuesday, March 9, 2021
- Washington State University professor Michael Neff overlooks the university’s new grass farm Sept. 4, 2019. Neff’s breeding program is developing a no-burn Kentucky bluegrass, long in the making.
A no-burn Kentucky bluegrass variety is in the works at Washington State University.
The university is applying for plant variety protection for the bluegrass, called Matchless, said Michael Neff, WSU grass breeder. After that step, it will begin licensing the seed.
He expects WSU to release Matchless in the near future, he said.
Neff spoke during the recent online Spokane Ag Show.
The variety has been 20 years in the making, beginning with the work of researchers William Johnston and R.C. Johnson, who developed a Kentucky bluegrass that didn’t need field burning after harvest.
Typically, Kentucky bluegrass fields are burned after harvest, Neff said. The burning removes excess thatch to increase yield the following year and help control pests and weeds.
“This was a way to keep the fields in production for many years,” Neff said. “These are perennial grasses. Once you have the field established, you can go in and harvest every year until the harvest starts to drop down.”
But burning was banned in the state because the heavy smoke raised concerns about health and the visibility on nearby roads.
Without burning, growers haven’t been able to keep the field in production for as many years, Neff said. They wound up with shorter rotations, less than three years instead of four or five years, which led to a lower economic return.
“There’s a trade-off,” he said. “If you can’t burn, what you have to do is basically leave the field after it’s been harvested with a thatch or even go in and mow or pull off that hay and thatch.”
Taking perennial grass fields out of production can impact soil and water quality due to erosion, topsoil loss and potential pesticide runoff, Neff said.
Researchers Johnston and Johnson wanted to identify a Kentucky bluegrass germplasm that would have good turfgrass quality and seed yield under no-burn seed production, Neff said. They narrowed more than 600 possible options in the USDA’s seed collection down to 225 in field tests, then down to 45, then down to 10.
Neff’s program is also working on seed germination in Kentucky bluegrass and western wheatgrass, among other projects.
