Virginia Turfgrass Council – History of the Turfgrass Program at Virginia Tech, Part One

October 2, 2023 | Virginia Turfgrass Council | PODCAST

PODCAST: PLAY IN NEW WINDOW | DOWNLOAD

SUBSCRIBE: APPLE PODCASTS | SPOTIFY

VIRGINIA TURFGRASS JOURNAL: Richard “Dick” Schmidt, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus and Mike Goatley, Ph.D., Professor & Extension Turfgrass Specialist

In preparation for the 50th anniversary of Field Days at the Virginia Tech Turfgrass Research Center on August 28–29, 2023, we present a brief synopsis of the history of the VT Turfgrass program in two parts. Part one covers the founding of the VT Turfgrass program in the 1950s through the early 2000s.

The Early Days of VT Turfgrass Programs

Both Professor John Shoulders and Dr. Roy Blaser were forage specialists in the Department of Agronomy at Virginia Tech in the mid 1950’s who had foresight concerning the value of a turfgrass research and teaching program at Virginia Tech. Dr. Blaser obtained grants for graduate students supporting turfgrass research with the Department of Highways in Virginia and West Virginia, and Professor John Shoulders “boot-legged” extension information to the professional turf growers in Virginia. They were instrumental in building a nine-hole golf course at Virginia Tech with different varieties of bentgrass cultivars on greens and tees for students to observe. Yes, tees – that was deemed revolutionary at the time.

Professor Shoulders essentially ‘recruited’ Dick Schmidt to Virginia Tech while John was meeting with Dr. Burt Musser on a visit to Penn State. A grant was obtained from DuPont Corporation to sponsor a doctoral graduate student position which was offered to Richard Schmidt, who had recently obtained his master’s degree at Penn State. He fulfilled the faculty position that mainly comprised of leading the turfgrass physiology graduate studies and conducting research (it wasn’t a bad investment in personnel: Schmidt spent his entire academic career at Virginia Tech and was awarded Professor Emeritus status after forty years of service!) Within a year of Schmidt’s hiring at Virginia Tech, a Turfgrass Ecology course was developed, and John Shoulders became the first Virginia turfgrass extension specialist. A state Turfgrass Council was formed in 1960, and for the first time, there were coordinated university and industry efforts with support from leading turfgrass industry members and firms, including the United States Golf Association.

More on Early VT Turfgrass Team Members

Dr. Houston Couch, renowned over the years for his expertise in turfgrass pathology and as a popular and entertaining speaker on the turf industry circuit, arrived from Penn State. Couch replaced Dr. Al Williams and became one of the country’s first full-time pathologists hired to conduct turfgrass disease research, and in particular to update the professional golf course management industry on new fungicides arriving on the market. Houston made quite a name for himself both nationally and internationally with the publication of one of the industry’s standard textbooks in turfgrass pathology called “Diseases of Turfgrasses”. Houston’s list of achievements was long and extensive, including the Golf Course Superintendent’s Association of America’s Col. John Morley Award in 2002 and the United States Golf Association’s Green Section Award in 2003.

Weed scientist Dr. Bill Chappell initiated the evaluation of the first preemergent crabgrass herbicides in the late 1950s and in 1961, Wayne Bingham came to Virginia Tech where he worked for the next 35 years. Wayne’s program addressed weed control in fine turf, and made advancements in highway rights of way weed management and the first generation of plant growth regulators. He expanded the turfgrass weed control research program in all areas for the turfgrass industry. Bingham was succeeded by Dr. Shawn Askew who arrived in the early 2000s to continue the growth of both applied and basic research programs in turfgrass weed science that span fine turf management to highway rights of way turf.

A.J. Powell, Jr. was known throughout the turfgrass industry of the United States for his tenure leading the development and expansion of the University of Kentucky’s turfgrass management program for over 30 years. However, A.J. received his PhD at Virginia Tech and got his start in academia as an extension specialist at Virginia Tech before moving to Lexington.

Dr. John (‘Jack’) Hall III came to Virginia Tech in 1976 from the University of Maryland to fill a Virginia Tech Turfgrass Extension Specialist position. Jack was an extension specialist until 1993, and from 1993-2001 he served as the Head of the Department of Crop and Soil Environmental Sciences. Jack worked with all segments of the industry in his role, but in particular Jack partnered with Virginia’s sod producers in his research and extension programs. Jack conducted variety trials on sod farms all over the state of Virginia.

Dr. David Chalmers was a former MS graduate student at Virginia Tech and subsequent Extension Turfgrass Specialist from 1981 thru 2002. Dave installed variety trials all over the state of Virginia, including the earliest NTEP trials at the Hampton Roads AREC. It was during Dr. Chalmers’s tenure that the NTEP trials became a focus of the data gathered by both VT and the University of Maryland and the use of those data in developing the annual turfgrass variety recommendation lists. Other research of note by David and graduate students reported on the value of returning clippings during mowing in order to recycle valuable nutrients to the soil and ultimately feeding the turf, while also reducing impact upon landfills from those that were still bagging the clippings. David also was active in the undergraduate teaching program and advised the graduate students working for Athletics. During David’s tenure the VT Turfgrass Club was formed in the mid-1990s for the undergraduate students.

Dr. Lincoln “Linc” Taylor worked in the area of turfgrass breeding later in his career at Virginia Tech. A primary focus of Linc’s efforts was in the development of one of the first improved cold tolerant seed propagated varieties called “Mohawk”. This variety continues to generate funds to support VT Turfgrass research to this day.

No agriculture research program may fulfill its mission without the dedication of office personnel and technicians. Significant research technicians who devoted their skills (and for many of them, most of their professional careers) to obtaining the data to enhance turfgrass knowledge were: Tommy Davis, a former golf course superintendent, who organized the schedules of the research at the Turfgrass Center, Dickie Shepherd whose unique fabrication skills were used very often to construct specialized equipment needed to accomplish research objectives, and Charlie McCoy who became the first turfgrass technician to utilize the early generation of computers for data entry and analysis. Some other very important names mentioned by Drs. Chalmers, Hall, and Schmidt were technicians David McKissack, George Stanger, Jodi Daniels, and Liz Rucker. Dick Shaver served as technician for Dr. Bingham for many years and Phil Keating in a similar role for Dr. Couch. While behind the scenes, these are the people that ultimately make a research program successful. They also tended to be the ones tasked with the daily management (as best that could be accomplished!) of the dozens of graduate and undergraduate students that worked at the Turfgrass Research Center over the years.

Early VT Turfgrass Facilities and Program Impacts

The earliest VT Turfgrass Research was performed on the edge of Virginia Tech’s campus golf course, and in the roughs of other local golf courses. The VT Dean of Agriculture funded the development of a field turfgrass research laboratory (the current VT Turfgrass Research Center) in the early 70’s. Prior to this use, the site was used by the Dairy Science program for haying and silage production, and a portion of the top section of the TRC also served as an airport runway (and has been a great site for doing research on low quality, compacted soils for years!). The turf industry came to the aid of the fledgling program in full force to supply the needed equipment. In particular, Tollie Quinn from Richmond Power Equipment provided considerable amounts of equipment for the research program, and to this day the Virginia Turfgrass Council’s most prestigious Award is known as the “Tollie Quinn Award” in recognition of his importance and dedication to the industry. The Agronomy department, the Plant Physiology, Pathology, and Weed Science department, and colleagues from the entomology department were engaged in research then and the collaborations continue to present day between the new School of Plant and Environmental Sciences and Entomology.

Although the Virginia Tech Turfgrass program was in its relative infancy in the early 1970s, an invitation during the first International Turfgrass Society Conference in Harrogate, England, was extended for Virginia Tech to host the second International conference in 1973 at Blacksburg, Virginia. There were 248 turfgrass scientists from 15 countries that came to Virginia Polytechnic and State University for the first ITS Conference in the United States. This meeting produced 71 peer-reviewed publications. Professor John Shoulders escorted the attendees in touring ongoing turf research trials from New Jersey, down the east coast and through Williamsburg, and finally ending up in Blacksburg for the formal presentation of papers. (And John’s wife Ruth served as hostess for all those that accompanied the scientists!) All Virginia Tech faculty associated with turf research participated in the program that included tours of the research field activities. The Virginia Turfgrass Council and the state turfgrass industry assisted greatly with financial and moral support. This format, under John Shoulder’s extensive extension leadership, has been followed in subsequent ITS conferences.

In the early 1970s one of the most significant problems on golf courses in eastern Virginia was predictable and consistent performance of common bermudagrass greens (that’s right – common bermudagrass!) that were overseeded for winter turf with a hundred pounds of annual ryegrass seed per 1,000 sq feet in early September. Hot weather in the spring obviously decimated the annual ryegrass, and similar to the challenges that remain with overseeding bermudagrass today, the ryegrass competition and putting green quality of the bermudagrass were greatly compromised during the transition from winter dormancy. An improved bermudagrass (‘328’ as it was commonly referred to, also known by its cultivar name ‘Tifgreen’) became available for use on putting green turf. Research was conducted in southeastern Virginia, mainly at The Country Club of Virginia (Richmond), James River Country Club, (Newport News) and the Golden Horseshoe Golf Club (Williamsburg) to evaluate this new bermudagrass and all the factors related to overseed species, time of overseeding, seedbed preparation, thatch control, and spring transition. Results showed that fine fescue, perennial ryegrass and even bentgrass seeded at lower amounts in early October provided a superior putting surface during the winter and spring transition period as compared to the traditional use of annual ryegrass overseeded in early September.

Another research area of importance in the late 1960’s and early 70’s was a somewhat controversial topic within and between academia and golf industry personnel regarding soil mixtures for golf putting greens. Soil for most greens at this time still consisted mostly of pushed-up topsoil, such as the initial first nine holes at Virginia Tech, and other greens were being constructed with pure sand. An experimental green was established to evaluate different soil compositions based on samples taken from the best green at the Country Club of Virginia in Richmond. This experimental green included the expanded shale manufactured by the Weblite Corporation, whose CEO, B.K. Powers, an early advocate of turfgrass research, sponsored this study. The expanded shale’s ability to retain capillary moisture was highly advantageous over straight sand in this era, and was definitely an improvement over the native soil push-up greens.

A consortium with the University of Maryland turfgrass faculty was initiated to evaluate data obtained from the various ecological regions on the performance of the multitude of turfgrass cultivars being evaluated in the mid-Atlantic. This program eventually expanded into a nation-wide variety evaluation program called the National Turfgrass Evaluation Program. The researchers from both universities still gather annually each spring to evaluate the previous year’s replicated field variety trial data and publish their annual turfgrass variety recommendation lists.

In the late 70’s an unusually cold winter injured most of the bermudagrass varieties in the test plots in Blacksburg. One selection that tolerated the low temperatures was obtained by Dr. A.J. Powell, Jr., a Virginia Tech turfgrass extension specialist (who later went on to a very distinguished career in the same role at the University of Kentucky) from a mountain golf course in North Carolina. It was released as a vegetative propagated variety named “Vamont”. Sod grower Jack Kidwell used Vamont quite successfully for many years in improving athletic fields and golf fairway turf in southeast Virginia.

Virginia’s transition zone climate has always provided the VT Turfgrass Team plenty of topics to work on! As improved fungicides and herbicides became available, bentgrass replaced the bermudagrass greens and tees across Virginia. But as happens over the decades, changes in the climate, genetics, and management tools and turfgrass manager skills provides the opportunities for new approaches in turfgrass management. Grassing options will always be in flux in Virginia in the transition zone and VT researchers will always have new genetics in both cool- and warm-season grasses to evaluate.

In the earliest days of turfgrass science research, many management principles and philosophies that we now take for granted had yet to be discovered. An excellent example of one of Virginia Tech’s major contributions to turfgrass science was the observance that excellent bentgrass color could be obtained all winter long when urea encapsulated in wax was applied in the fall. The aforementioned A.J. Powell, Jr. a doctoral student at the time who eventually filled a turfgrass extension specialist position at Virginia Tech, was tasked with determining if this extended color and growth response from the fall N fertilization application was good or bad for the turf. Textbooks at the time indicated nitrogen fertilization to cool season grass after August was not recommended. Contrarily to this scientific opinion, Dr. Powell obtained data showing how important appropriate levels of plant available nitrogen were during the fall and early winter months for root development, carbohydrate storage, and enhanced turfgrass performance in the subsequent spring and summer. This work initiated what is now the standard practice of responsible (and beneficial) fall and early winter nitrogen fertilization for cool-season grasses in particular.

A few Graduate Research Projects of Particular Note at Virginia Tech

Bentgrass was severely injured on several of the Virginia Tech fertilizer test plots during an extremely dry February in the 1970s. However, it was observed that plots with fertilizers containing iron had the least injury. Graduate student Vince Snyder was able to repeat this observation by putting bentgrass fertilized with and without iron under a rainout shelter the following winter. Iron fertilized bentgrass had stimulated root development, enabling the grass to tolerate drought. Building upon the value of iron applications to turf, sod producers started using late fall iron fertilization to enhance the maturation of sod thus enabling earlier harvest the following year.

The work with iron stimulated additional studies on the influence of exogenous nutrient applications on the metabolism of grasses. Tom Watschke (Tom went on to a very distinguished career on the faculty of Penn State) showed that the northern ecotype Kentucky bluegrasses utilized nitrogen more rapidly than southern ecotypes. This is one explanation why northern ecotypes of Kentucky bluegrass do poorly during hot weather. It was noted in the literature that supplemental applications of a synthetic cytokinin called benzyladenine influenced the metabolism of plants. In the mid-1980s, graduate student Richard White (who went on to serve on the faculty of Texas A&M) reported that benzyladenine-treated bermudagrass initiated photosynthesis earlier than non-treated during warming periods as the grass was transitioning from winter dormancy. White also observed that iron-fertilized bermudagrass maintained aesthetic quality and photosynthetic recovery of cold sensitive and cold tolerant cultivars after chilling. Mike Goatley (current Virginia Tech Extension Turfgrass Specialist) conducted studies that reported anti-senescence activities were obtained in turfgrasses treated with seaweed extracts, humic acid, and some triazole compounds. Later, these products were labeled as biostimulants, products defined by the Virginia Tech turfgrass program as organic substances that when applied in small amounts, may enhance plant growth and metabolism.

Building upon White and Goatley’s early research, Schmidt’s research program continued to explore the possibilities of biostimulants with his graduate students. Students such as JiYu Yan, Daryoosh Nabati, Wang Juan Luo, and H. Sun all provided significant expansion in the scientific literature regarding how supplemental applications of biostimulants improved turfgrass tolerance to both environmental and pest stressors. A current faculty member that trained under Dick Schmidt and carries on Schmidt’s groundbreaking research in biostimulants is Dr. Xunzhong Zhang, whose doctoral work led to the knowledge that small amounts of exogenous biostimulants influenced turfgrasses to develop endogenous antioxidants that help turfgrasses better survive adverse environmental conditions..

Some other graduate students that were advised by the first generation of VT Turfgrass Researchers whose studies impacted the knowledge of turfgrass ecology in very significant ways were Dr. Jamie Brueninger, Dr. Dean Mosdell, Dr. Dwight Barkley, Dr. Mark Flannagan, Dr. Gary Custis, Dr. Cale Bigelow, Dr. Jeff Beasley, Dr. Gregg Munshaw, and Mr. Sam Doak. These individuals continued their contributions in industry or institutions of higher learning in a variety of ways. Of course, there are literally hundreds more undergraduate and graduate students that have come through our research and teaching programs that have made major impacts in turfgrass management in industry and academia in Virginia and beyond.

In the future, look for part two of the Virginia Tech Turfgrass Program history that will pick up in the early 2000s and cover the people and programs of Virginia Tech Turfgrass through the present time. We hope you will join us in Blacksburg August 28-29, 2023 for our 50th Anniversary of the Virginia Tech Turfgrass Research Center to see the latest research being conducted by the VT Turfgrass Team, but of equal importance, to renew acquaintances with old friends and make connections with new friends in this amazing industry. Our purpose remains the same as it did for the inaugural Field Day in 1972.