A Turfgrass Timeline: The History of Creeping Bentgrass Breeding

The Beginnings of Bentgrass Breeding

In many ways, the 1920s laid the foundation on which future creeping bentgrass breeding efforts were built. Although better selections of bentgrass were being grown on a few golf courses and efforts were made to commercially produce bentgrass stolons, the advancements in bentgrass selection, breeding and research made by scientists like Piper and Oakley are what established the framework for all future efforts. The very first seeded bentgrass cultivar – ‘Seaside’ – was released in the 1920s. Producers simply harvested ‘Seaside’ bentgrass seed from natural stands growing in Oregon’s Coos Bay, Umpqua and Siuslaw regions.

Back on the East Coast, the Arlington Turf Gardens had established 30,000 square feet of bentgrass at putting green height by 1930. The majority of early work by Piper and Oakley was on stolon plantings of creeping, velvet and colonial bentgrass strains, but they also selected plants from different bentgrass seed sources. Around this same time, Dr. John Monteith Jr. and Dr. Fred Grau conducted what are known as the “pie green” experiments nationwide. This experiment enlisted 15 golf courses to establish test plots of 12 or more wedge-shaped sections. Each section had a different strain of the “C-series” of creeping bentgrass. Cultivars from this C-series would go on to become the basis for all early creeping bentgrass putting greens.

In 1937, Dr. H.B. “Burt” Musser from Penn State University became interested in the grasses available for golf courses. He wrote that cultivars like ‘Seaside’ actually consisted of many different individual types of bentgrass – some good, some poor – yet growers made no effort to breed out the weak plants. Therefore the turf represented an average for the species instead of the best available options. To address this issue, Musser began a bentgrass breeding program at Penn State. Although unaware at the time, Musser ushered in a new era of turfgrass breeding, one that would be led by university-based scientists.

The ‘Penncross’ Era

Musser’s bentgrass breeding research led to the 1954 release of ‘Penncross’. He carefully selected plants with desirable qualities and reduced weaknesses through controlled breeding. ‘Penncross’ received favorable performance reports over an extensive range of conditions. The variety also outperformed the other seeded bentgrasses and had a wider range of adaptability than individual vegetative strains. These traits made ‘Penncross’ the most popular bentgrass putting green variety for the next 30 years.

The release of ‘Penncross’ was a landmark moment in turfgrass breeding and it is considered to have been the first “improved” variety of creeping bentgrass. ‘Penncross’ is still in use today – a testimony to its transformative and innovative qualities. In 1959, Musser retired and his Ph.D. student Joseph Duich continued breeding bentgrasses at Penn State with grants from the Green Section that started in 1958. He also worked closely with producers to maintain pure seed quality and reduce the risk of off-type bentgrasses getting into the mix.

Another landmark moment in turfgrass breeding took place in the 1960s, when Penn State declared ‘Penncross’ a proprietary or “private” variety to discourage unauthorized sale of the product. Through a formal agreement, Penn State authorized the Penncross Bentgrass Growers Association of Oregon to produce and market the seed. The association created the brand name Tee-2-Green and ensured that all Penn State or “Penn” bentgrasses sold under that name would be certified and meet quality standards.

Rutgers and New Breeding Grounds

In 1960, Dr. C. Reed Funk started the cool-season turfgrass breeding program at Rutgers University in New Jersey, kicking off a productive career that spanned four decades. During his tenure, hundreds of new Kentucky bluegrass, perennial ryegrass, and tall fescue varieties revolutionized the turfgrass industry. Despite Dr. Funk’s early success, it would still be another 20 years before Rutgers began a bentgrass breeding program in earnest.

At this point, it’s worth emphasizing that breeding quality turfgrasses takes time. An excellent example is work that began in 1971 on a USGA-funded project to breed creeping bentgrass with better adaptation to conditions in the Southwest. In this project, Dr. Robert Kneebone at the University of Arizona worked with Mike Richardson at Seed Research of Oregon to develop and release ‘SR 1020’. From 1971 to 1976, Kneebone and Richardson collected 93 clones from old golf greens in Arizona and California – as well as from Clemson University – that spread and persisted in hot, dry climates with saline irrigation water. Further selection identified five clones that maintained a dense stand with good quality and color basis, despite the adverse conditions of heat, drought and salinity. These five clones became the parents of ‘SR 1020’, released in 1982 – over 10 years after the cultivar's development began.

Back at Penn State, Duich released ‘Penneagle’ in 1978, whose parents were second- or third-generation progeny tracing back to the earliest bentgrasses collected by Piper and Oakley. ‘Penneagle’ consistently produced top turfgrass quality, resisted annual bluegrass invasion, and showed resistance to dollar spot and leaf spot. Duich’s breeding work was being driven by demands for better playing conditions and higher-quality grasses that could tolerate lower mowing heights, needed less water, and had better pest tolerance. Duich, Funk and others laid the foundation for the next wave of innovation in bentgrass breeding that would accompany a boom in golf.

The Golf Boom

The 1980s saw a surge in the popularity of golf and golf course construction. Duich continued his efforts at Penn State with the release of ‘Pennlinks’ in 1987. This cultivar features an upright growth habit, finer leaves, less segregation (off-types), excellent seasonal turfgrass quality and improved overall performance. Funding from the new USGA Turfgrass Research Program helped develop ‘Penneagle’ and ‘Pennlinks’.

Several commercial seed companies also became more involved in creeping bentgrass breeding during the golf boom of the 1980s. In 1981, Dr. Rich Hurley of Lofts Seed asked Dr. Funk if he would be interested in a creeping bentgrass breeding project. ‘Southshore’, a broad-based cultivar derived from 203 parents, was released jointly in 1992 by Lofts Seed and Rutgers University. This marked the start of the Rutgers bentgrass breeding program, one that would go on to become among the most important.

To keep up with increasing demands for course conditions, developing disease-resistant cultivars became a priority for creeping bentgrass breeding programs. A breakthrough in breeding for disease resistance was made with the cultivar ‘Providence’, which was developed and released in 1988 by Seed Research of Oregon using parents from Dr. Richard Skogley at the University of Rhode Island. Providence could form a dark green, fine-textured, upright, high-tillering turf with improved resistance to dollar spot. The parents used in the development of ‘Providence’ were from a long-term improvement program funded by the USGA at the University of Rhode Island since 1965. Once again, quality turfgrass breeding takes time.

The year 1984 marked the start of a partnership between several golf clubs in Dallas, who formed Bentgrass Research, Inc. Along with the USGA, they provided significant funding to Dr. Milt Engelke at Texas A&M University to begin a bentgrass breeding program. Ten years later, Engelke and Dr. Virginia Lehman released ‘Crenshaw’ and ‘Cato’ in 1993 and ‘Mariner’ in 1996 from the early breeding efforts. ‘Crenshaw’ and ‘Cato’ were derived from parents selected for improved heat tolerance and performed better than ‘Penncross’ in the South. Lehman and Engelke selected individual plants from ‘Seaside’ with improved salinity tolerance to produce ‘Mariner’.

The Modern Era of Bentgrass Breeding

In 1993, fourteen years after the initial bentgrass breeding project at Rutgers, ‘L-93’ was commercially released under the direction of Rich Hurley. The release of ‘L-93’ marked a significant step forward in breeding cultivars with improved dollar spot and brown patch resistance as well as improved density. Along with ‘Independence’ and a few other second- and third-generation improved varieties, ‘L-93’ became a very popular choice for fairways in areas with significant disease pressure and required less fungicide inputs. Dr. Funk retired in 1996 and Dr. William Meyer, a commercial turfgrass breeder from Pure Seed in Oregon, joined the Rutgers team and continued the breeding program’s success. In 2003, Dr. Stacy Bonos started her career at Rutgers, and one of her objectives was to improve dollar spot resistance in bentgrass. One of the first disease-resistant varieties released from these efforts was ‘Declaration’.

Bonos continues to breed new high-performance bentgrass varieties with resistance to multiple diseases. Better genetic resistance to common disease problems significantly reduces fungicide use for more sustainable golf. Using improved bentgrasses on fairways and putting greens can save golf courses 25% or more on their dollar spot spray programs. With today's fungicide prices, these savings can amount to tens of thousands of dollars per year. ‘Piper’ and ‘Oakley’ are two excellent new creeping bentgrass varieties that will help meet this demand for reducing fungicide and other inputs.

Hurley released ‘007’ creeping bentgrass in 2007, which was bred with parents released from Rutgers University under the direction of Meyer, Bonos and himself. In 2017, Hurley worked with Bonos at Rutgers and Dr. Leah Brilman at Seed Research to release the cultivar ‘777’. This new cultivar provides excellent heat tolerance while producing a close-cut putting surface that is fine and dense.

Although the advancements discussed up to this point are remarkable, we are also at the dawn of a new age in turfgrass breeding, brought about by recent technological developments. Breeders are now employing cutting-edge techniques like high-throughput phenotyping, genome editing tools, and artificial intelligence to improve the efficiency of the turfgrass breeding process. The future of bentgrass breeding may look different from what Piper and Oakley would be familiar with, but some aspects – like the demand for high-quality playing surfaces that require fewer inputs – will never change.

NTEP Creeping Bentgrass Trials

The National Turfgrass Evaluation Program (NTEP) conducted its first creeping bentgrass putting green trials in 1989 and has long been a trusted source for information on the relative performance of different turfgrass varieties. In that first trial, ‘Providence’ and the Scotts Company’s ‘Pro/Cup’ were the only varieties with better overall quality ratings than ‘Penncross’. But by the second NTEP trial in 1993, more than 21 entries performed better than ‘Penncross’.

Many golf course superintendents questioned the usefulness of the 1989 NTEP data since it came only from university test plots. To address this, NTEP, the USGA Green Section and the Golf Course Superintendents of Association of America (GCSAA) conducted on-site golf course testing of new bentgrass varieties beginning in 1997. That year, Duich at Penn State entered ‘Penn A-1’, ‘Penn A-4’, and ‘Penn G-2’, which were among the top performers and set a new standard for creeping bentgrass performance.

NTEP continues to be an important resource for superintendents when selecting grass varieties for their golf course. An online, searchable NTEP database for creeping bentgrass and other cool- and warm-season turfgrasses is now available as well.

Final Thoughts

These are inspiring times for golf course superintendents, turfgrass breeders and the game of golf in general. The putting green conditions so many golfers enjoy today are only possible because of the high-quality creeping bentgrass varieties developed through years of hard work by dedicated turfgrass breeders. Beyond playability, significant improvements in disease, heat and drought tolerance will help golf courses deal with the environmental and financial challenges ahead. Today, the Mike Davis Program for Advancing Golf Course Management continues the USGA’s legacy of funding research on turfgrass breeding and genetics by supporting 25 ongoing cultivar development projects at universities across the country. With advancements in technology and a talented new generation of breeders hard at work, the future of bentgrass putting greens will keep getting better.