Abstract
Abstract Researches with Brazilian native species of Axonopus and Paspalum genus have indicated their lawn-use. Thus, this research aimed to evaluate the use of sprigs, which are rhizomes and/or stolons fragments of plants without substrate and with reduced aerial part, as a propagation method for turfgrass establishment. Two experiments were developed. Experiment 1: turfgrass sods (1026 cm²) from Axonopus parodii (AP 01), Paspalum lepton (PL 01) and P. notatum (PN 01 to PN 06) accessions, were fragmented in a straw crushing machine in order to obtain the sprigs. After cleaning the substrate and organic residues from the sprigs, the following variables were analyzed: total number of sprigs; minimum, maximum and average length of the sprigs; standard deviation; number of sprigs shorter than 2 cm, from 2 to 4 cm, and from 4 to 6 cm long. Experiment 2: sprigs from three different length classes were planted and evaluated at 63 days after planting. The commercial variety Zoysia japonica (ZJ 01) was used as a control treatment. The following characters were analyzed: the survival rate of the sprigs, the number of shoots, expansion, soil coverage rate, dry biomass of aerial part, and dry biomass of the roots. Correlations were made among the data obtained. Higher yields were obtained for sprigs shorter than 2 cm and from 2 to 4 cm. All accessions presented better development when established with sprigs longer than 2 cm. The Paspalum notatum accessions PN 01, PN 02, PN 03 and PN 05 could be selected for turfgrass establishment by sprigs propagation.
Highlights
Material and methodsMany native Paspalum species from Brazil have excellent lawn performance, but there are very few cultivars available on the market
Experiment 1 After cultivating for 98 days and later fragmentating the sods to obtain the sprigs using a domestic straw crushing machine, it was observed that the length of the sprigs ranged between 0.5 cm to 11.50 cm
From turfgrass sods cultivated in the 3 trays (3078 cm2), were obtained, 390 sprigs for the accession AP 01 with average length of 3.57 ± 1.93 cm, 480 sprigs for the PL 01 with average length of 1.96 ± 1.09 cm, and for the P. notatum accessions, 445 to 752 sprigs, with average length of 1.94 ± 0.92 cm (PN 03) up to 2.36 ± 1.12 cm (PN 06) (Table 1)
Summary
Many native Paspalum species from Brazil have excellent lawn performance, but there are very few cultivars available on the market. Paspalum notatum stands out for its dense lawn with a sturdy root system, drought-tolerant and low-fertilizer requirements. It is very popular in urban areas and it is commonly used in parks, industrial areas and roads or rail ways margins (Castro et al, 2015; Silva et al, 2018). Axonopus parodii and P. lepton performed exceptionally well in lawn tests under tropical climate and high input conditions (Silva et al, 2018). In most gardens of Brazil, the exotic species Zoysia japonica Esmeralda grass) predominates, which requires medium to intensive management (Souza et al, 2020)
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