Efficay Of Salinity Mitigation On Warm Season Turfgrass

Abstract

Salinity has become one of the major issues in turfgrass maintenance due to limitations on use of fresh water for turfgrass irrigation. Usage of brackish and reclaimed water cause damage to turfgrass and soil. Gypsum is widely used to mitigate the salt injury. The application of Gypsum on sand based root-zone is also noticed but the applicability of this was not initially designed for sand. The goal of this research was to evaluate the affect of additional gypsum on warm season turfgrasses under salinity stress. Poly-house and field experiment were designed in 2012-2014 and evaluation was carried out on ʻZeon' Zoysia grass, ʻPlatinum' Seashore paspalum and ʻTifEagle' bermuda grass. Cultivars were established and salinity stress was imposed and application of gypsum was carried out to evaluate the differences. Significant differences were observed for salinity and grass genotypes. turf quality, clipping yield, chlorophyll content decreased with increase in salinity and was not correlated to gypsum. The evapo-transpiration and electrolyte leakage were significantly reduced by gypsum application. Indicating that Calcium can be used as an nutrition but not as a sand amendment for salinity.