Producing 'greener' high-value sports turf through soil microbial management

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The overall aim is to reduce the reliance of turf on pesticides and fertilizers and to create 'greener', sustainable high quality turf in the UK. Our main objective is to determine the optimum management methods for soil microbes in sports turf. We will sample sports turf soils, extract the beneficial microbes and culture them in the CASE partner's laboratory.We will then examine how these can be formulated to be applied to sports turf, so as to improve turf condition.There are 4 linked work packages, which aim to answer the following questions:1. Is the soil microbial community compromised by the intensive management regime on sports turf?Sampling a range of sports turf soils will enable us too characterise the communities of microbes that can live there.2. Does the addition fungicides and fertilizers reduce populations of mycorrhizal fungi?We have to identify the microbes that can exist with pesticide application so the two can be integrated.3. Is the soil microbial community resource-limited?Adding carbon to the soilwill feed the microbes and possibly overcome the limitation due to mowing.4. How can mycorrhizas and soil bacteria be added to turf in a sustainable manner?A series of field trials will try to identify appropriate microbes that could be formulated into a commercial product.