Influence of Prestress Environment on Annual Bluegrass Heat Tolerance

Annual bluegrass (Poa annua L.) turf quality is reduced during periods of high temperature. To predict heat stress injury and develop improved prestress maintenance practices, an understanding of the seasonal variation in annual bluegrass heat tolerance and the influence of soil moisture on heat tolerance is crucial. Annual bluegrass growing in the field on a Drummer silty clay loam (fine silty, mixed, mesic Typic Haplaquolls) was sampled on 23 dates over two growing seasons and brought to a laboratory for exposure to high temperature. Prestress environmental conditions (air and soil temperature, soil matric potential, plant water potential, daylength, rainrail and irrigation) were monitored. Plants were enclosed in plastic bags, exposed for 30 min to temperatures in the range 40 to 48 C in a water bath and placed in a greenhouse for a 2-week recovery period. The dry weight of the stressed plants expressed as a percentage of the controls (heat tolerance indices, HTI) was used as a measure of heat tolerance. In a second experiment, field plots of annual bluegrass were maintained for one.growing season under either a dry (rainfall plus irrigation to prevent severe wilting) or moist (dry treatment plus to-mm irrigation every other day) soil regime. Plants were stress-tested on five dates when differences in soil matric potentials existed between treatments, and on five dates when matric potentials were identical (saturated soil). TUrfgrass color, quality, and rooting depth were monitored. The best equation fitted to HTI using the results of the first experiment was: y = 15.6 X A + 9.85 X B 0.22 X A2 0.31 X B2 0.25 X A X B 194.71 (R2 = 0.78, p = 0.0001), where A = mean maximum daily air temperature ("C) for the 2 days preceding sampling and B = mean total precipitation (mm) of the period 2 through 4 days prior to sampling. The second experiment revealed a nonsignificant trend for annual bluegrass maintained under moist soil conditions to. be less heat tolerant than that under dry conditions. No differences were found due to treatment in rooting depth which negatively correlated (r = -0.83) with the soil temperature at 10 cm. Because of reduced turfgrass quality with the dry soil conditions, there appeared to be little potential ror increasing heat tolerance through irrigation manage-