“Different Shades of Green”, the 6th European Turfgrass Society Research Conference: Agronomy Journal Special Section

Abstract

The European Turfgrass Society (ETS) held its 6th Research Conference in Manchester, UK, from 2 to 4 July 2018. The meeting followed the ones in Italy (2008), France (2010), Norway (2012), Germany (2014), and Portugal (2016). The theme of this year’s conference, “Different Shades of Green”, was chosen to reflect the wide diversity of turfgrasses utilized for amenity and landscape applications and the many different athletic grass fields found all over the world. Managing turfgrass sport fields and amenity landscapes in a sustainable manner has become the focus in turfgrass maintenance and the theme should reflect this fact. Political, social, environmental, and economic drivers are increasingly aiming on the well-being and future of our planet for the good of all. However, most turfgrass areas are part of a leisure industry, and a balance must be found between the demands and expectations of customers who pay for and use the sporting and landscape amenities and the sustainable maintenance approach. We cannot forget that players are our raison d'être! The challenge of a modern turfgrass manager is to utilize resources in a manner to meeting the needs of users without unduly affecting the wider environment. Therefore, one of the objectives of the ETS is to allow for a holistic view of turfgrass areas particularly with respect to its influence on urban and environmental quality. Other objectives include facilitating research cooperation, share knowledge on good management practices, and disseminate relevant and science based information forum to its members and to the public at large. The papers presented at the Conference covered a variety of topics from speakers representing many different parts the world. Some presentations are summarized as short abstracts and were published in a special edition of the European Journal of Turfgrass Science. Full papers are published in this special section of Agronomy Journal. A total of 19 manuscripts were submitted to Agronomy Journal, of which 11 were accepted for publication after peer review. Topics covered include turfgrass morphology (Pornaro et al., 2018), cultivar identification (Yang et al., 2018), and turfgrass performance affected by management approaches such as mowing and fertilization (Guertal and McElroy, 2018; Pease and Stier, 2018; Schwartz et al., 2018). Several projects investigated the use of organic products or maintenance strategies for disease control (Aamlid et al., 2018; Mattox et al., 2018; Schmid et al., 2018; Wang et al, 2018). Findings on irrigation water conservation and salinity remediation are reported by Serena et al. (2018) and Schiavon and Baird (2018), respectively. We would like to thank Dr. John Stier, University of Tennessee, and Dr. Mike Richardson, University of Arkansas, who served as editors for this special section. We would like to also thank the Associate Editors and the numerous anonymous reviewers who provided valuable input. Without their help, this special section would not have been possible.