Reprinted from Crop Science Vol. 27, No.3 Influence of Prestress Environment on Annual Bluegrass Heat Tolerancel

Annual bluegrass (Poa annua L.) turf quality is reduced during periods of high temperature. To predict heat stress injury and de-velop 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 blue-grass 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 tem-perature, soil matric potential, plant water potential, daylength, rain-rail and irrigation) were monitored. Plants were enclosed in plastic bags, exposed for 30 min to temperatures in the range 40 to 48a 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 per-centage 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 po-tentials 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 + 9.8