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John Reitman

By John Reitman

University of Florida answers call for more grassroots turf education

With 1,000 golf courses, 2,000 high schools, thousands of parks and a population of almost 20 million people, Florida claims to have the nation's largest turfgrass economy.

 
Bryan Unruh, Ph.D., has wanted to bring education out into the field around Florida for the past two decades.According to the Florida Turfgrass Association, 178,000 people contribute to the state's turf industry, creating an economy worth nearly $8 billion. Whether it is golf, sports turf, lawn and landscape or parks and rec, one thing turf managers from each segment of the industry have in common is a need for education.
 
The University of Florida is stepping up help to help fill that void with the first of what it hopes will be many installments of turf education designed to help everyone, from entry level lawncare operators to the most experienced golf course superintendent or sports turf manager.
 
Bryan Unruh, Ph.D., professor of environmental horticulture and associate center director of the University of Florida's West Florida Research and Education Center in the state's Panhandle, has been wanting to start such a program for most of the past two decades. Several research and teaching positions flipping in the past several years, stalling his plan, until the recent addition of Travis Shaddox, Ph.D., at the South Florida Research and Education Center near Fort Lauderdale.
 
"In my 21 years in Florida, through various surveys, a need for more in-depth education continually came forward," Unruh said. "As we brought on Dr. Shaddox here in Fort Lauderdale, the time just seemed right."
 
"We wanted golf course superintendents, athletic field managers, landscape contractors, all these different groups of people from around Florida coming in to learn the science behind turfgrass management, realizing they have varying levels of knowledge and skills. We feel that diversity makes for a great learning environment, because they are teaching each other."
 
Limited to 40 attendees, Turf School I - Evidence-Based Turfgrass Management was a two-day series of seminars, workshops, demonstrations and field trips that provided in-depth information on water, light and temperature, and how those three factors influence almost everything turf managers do on a daily basis. As the name implies, all curriculum presented was the result of scientific research, not anecdotal evidence from someone down the road.
 
"The object is to provide turf stakeholders in Florida with an opportunity to come in and ask questions, and for us to provide answers from an evidenced-based point of view," Shaddox said.
 
"There is a lot of anecdotal evidence out there, and observational evidence, but from our perspective, when we provide answers to questions, those answers need to evidence-based from a scientific perspective. That way, turf managers can take that information and immediately implement it into their programs and create a more efficient program by reducing their costs, producing the same turf conditions with fewer resources or enhance their programs and produce better-quality turfgrass."
 
Ed Lamour, center, sports turf manager for the Miami Dolphins practice facility, shares some of his secrets with attendees.
 
 
The obvious challenge with a diverse audience with varying levels of expertise is developing curriculum that is meaningful to all, regardless of experience.
 
Each presentation slide shown throughout the two-day program included a footnote about the scientific research supporting the data, some of which was provided as supplemental handouts.
 
"We have people in here with less than three or four years of experience in turf and some with 20 years or more. There is a great variation of knowledge in the audience," Shaddox said. 
 
"We made conscious efforts to address multiple levels of knowledge in the audience. Among the things we did, in the lectures, we tried to present the information in layman's terms, while providing scientific manuscripts for the experienced turf managers."
 
The event also included a field trip to the adjacent Miami Dolphins practice facility, where sports turf manager Ed Lamour shared how he manages Bermudagrass and paspalum Travis Shaddox, Ph.D., (wearing black shirt in center of screen) discusses fertilization techniques with the group.on two NFL fields.
 
David Dore-Smith, superintendent at Copperleaf Golf Club in Estero, Florida, was eager to attend the event after meeting with Shaddox at chapter meetings.
 
"He was very open with us how he wanted to approach his testing at this facility," Dore-Smith said. "He wanted to show evidence-based research, in that we could get over here and get our hands dirty, look at the different products and ask the relevant questions that appealed to us. 
 
"When I read the curriculum those were the sorts of things that appealed to me."
 
Audience diversity, said Jason Kruse, Ph.D., associate professor of turfgrass management at the university's main campus in Gainesville, has added to the back-to-school experience.
 
"It's been great to see the spectrum of people we have drawn into this," Kruse said. "That spectrum of experience has made this a richer experience for everyone already. We tried to welcome a dialogue throughout this process, and we have people with different levels of expertise of their own that they have brought to the discussion."
 
UF will follow up with the second installment of its evidence-based turf school, probably in early 2017 so as not to conflict with the Golf Industry Show in February in Orlando. Turf School II will teach attendees primarily how to manage insects, weeds, diseases and nematodes. 
 
"We are going to bring in other players from the UF turf team," Unruh said. "And in we will want attendees at the next event to come in and take part in a lot of lab exercises where they will learn how to extract nematodes from a sample. or grow out a pathogen so we can say 'yes this is the problem you are experiencing in the field.' "





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