Investigating the effect of subsurface irrigation system, sprinkler and superabsorbent polymers on quantitative and qualitative characteristics of turf grass

The irrigation of turf grass is the major factor to water consumption in advanced urban area. Therefore, reduce water consumption using subsurface irrigation system could be a new strategy for optimization of water requirement. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of subsurface irrigation system, sprinkler and superabsorbent polymers on quantitative and qualitative characteristics of turf grass. Experimental design was a split -plot with three replication in agriculture faculty of Tarbiat Modares university in 2014. During the experiment, some factors such as applied water volume, wet and dry weight of sprouts, sprouts length, color and length of roots were measured to express the differences between irrigation methods. The results showed that, without using superabsorbent polymer, subsurface irrigation could reduce 41% of water consumption compared to sprinkler irrigation. Meanwhile this reducing consumption was 51% using superabsorbent polymer treatment. Also, length of roots in buried porous clay capsules irrigation was significantly different at%5 level in comparison to sprinkler irrigation. The superabsorbent application had significant effect on increasing root growth but the other index, wet weight, length and color of Sprouts had no significant effect. According to the results of this research, application of buried using buried porous clay capsules is recommended in order to optimize water consumption for urban area located at arid and semi-arid regions.