New Creeping Bentgrass Studies

For the last twenty years, we have maintained National Turfgrass Evaluation Program (NTEP) creeping bentgrass studies at Iowa State University. These were coordinated by NTEP, based out of Beltsville, MD. Like many other entities in this economic environment, NTEP has come on hard times and has suspended these projects at most of the Midwestern universities last year. In response, turf researchers in this region have banded together and formed their own trials. These include both fairway height and green height studies. They were seeded in the fall of 2008. The coordinator of these tests is Qi Zhang of North Dakota State University. She obtained the seed from the seed companies and distributed it to the cooperating universities. She will also coordinate data collection. The varieties in the trials are listed in Table 1.