Abstract
Continued reliance on chemical methods for controlling annual bluegrass has resulted in many populations evolving resistance to PRE and POST herbicides, particularly in warm-season turfgrass species such as zoysiagrass. Soil seedbank management is critically important when managing herbicide-resistant weeds. Fraise mowing (also spelled fraze, frase, and fraize) is a new turfgrass cultivation practice designed to remove aboveground biomass while allowing turf to regrow vegetatively. We hypothesized that this process would remove annual bluegrass seed and therefore be a mechanical means of controlling annual bluegrass in turfgrass. Zoysiagrass field plots were fraise-mowed in June 2015 only, June 2016 only, June 2015 and June 2016, or left untreated. The fraise mower was configured to remove the uppermost 25 mm of plot surface (i.e., 15-mm verdure and 10-mm soil). Annual bluegrass infestation was quantified in April following fraise mowing via grid count. Soil cores (10.8 cm diameter) were extracted from each plot after grid count data were collected to assess effects of fraise mowing on the soil seedbank. Moreover, replicated subsamples (7.6 L) of debris generated during fraise mowing were collected to better understand weed seed content removed during the fraise mowing process. Fraise mowing in June offered a slight reduction (24%) in annual bluegrass cover the following April. Whereas 28% of the seed in fraise-mowing debris consisted of annual bluegrass, there was no difference in the quantity of annual bluegrass seed remaining in the soil seedbank among fraise-mowed and non-fraise-mowed plots. Although fraise mowing may help to temporarily reduce existing annual bluegrass infestations via mechanical removal, the frequency and depth we studied did not effectively reduce the seedbank. Fraise mowing is a useful tool for providing mechanical suppression of annual bluegrass but it is not a replacement for properly timed herbicide applications.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 482-488 |
| Number of pages | 7 |
| Journal | Weed Technology |
| Volume | 34 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Aug 1 2020 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:We thank Dr. Ross Braun, Tyler Campbell, Nathan Deppe, Daniel Farnsworth, Trevor Hill, Cory Wright, Mitchell Riffey, Geoff Schortgen, Dallas Taylor, and Dan Weisenberger for their efforts in this research. This work was supported by the Tennessee Agricultural Experiment Station and AQUA-AID Solutions. This work was also supported by U.S. Department of Agriculture–National Institute of Food and Agriculture Hatch project 1019791. Mention of trade names or commercial products in this publication is solely for the purpose of providing specific information and does not imply recommendation or endorsement by the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture or Purdue University.
Publisher Copyright:
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Keywords
- Nomenclature: Annual bluegrass (Poa annua L.)
- zoysiagrass (Zoysia japonica Steud.)