Effect of different irrigation levels on morphological and physiological features of SPORT grass-seed mixture

Water resource management is one of the major challenges in lawn management. Considering the fact that Iran is located in a dry and semiarid area, lawn water demand and resource management is very crucial. Therefore, in the present study, the effect of irrigation levels on some growth traits of turf sport mixture was studied. Irrigation treatments consisted of 50, 75 and 100 % of field capacity with one-day interval watering frequency which were applied when the plants were stablished. Morphological and physiological traits were measured at weeks two, four and six after applied levels of irrigation. Results showed that as the amount of watering decreased, turf longitudinal growth, dry matter, visual quality, relative water content and leaf phosphor content declined. This was while cell electrolyte leakage increased. However, at 75 % of field capacity irrigation level, leaf total chlorophyll and potassium content was more than 100% of field capacity irrigated plants. Based on the obtained results, there was no significant difference between two levels of 100 and 75% of field capacity irrigation levels for all measured traits. This was while both irrigation levels were significantly better than 50% of field capacity. Generally, the results indicated that reducing irrigation by one-fourth of field capacity maintains the quality and quality of “Sport” mixture grass in normal conditions and at the same time, greatly reduces the amount of consumed water for irrigation.