How Long Does It Take to Develop a New Turfgrass Cultivar?

A new turfgrass cultivar does not appear overnight.

Traditional plant breeding can take 10–15 years to develop and evaluate new material, with improvements often coming through relatively small genetic gains rather than dramatic changes from one generation to the next.

Those gains matter.

Better disease tolerance, improved drought tolerance, stronger wear performance or adaptation to particular growing conditions can all help turf managers build more resilient and better-performing surfaces.

Understanding the time and evaluation behind cultivar development also explains why the choice of cultivar matters when selecting professional grass seed.

Why does turfgrass breeding take so long?

Turfgrass breeding is a process of gradual selection.

Breeders work with genetically diverse plant material and identify plants displaying useful characteristics. Promising material must then continue to be evaluated to determine whether those characteristics are sufficiently consistent and useful for managed turf.

That takes time.

ICL Grass Seeds specialist Simon Taylor estimates that developing a new cultivar through traditional plant breeding can take approximately 10–15 years.

Unlike a manufactured product that can be redesigned quickly, breeders are working with living plants and successive generations of genetic material.

Progress therefore tends to be incremental.

But relatively small improvements in individual characteristics can become important when turf is managed intensively over many years.

Simon assessing trials at Den Haan Zaden, in the Netherlands

What are turfgrass breeders trying to improve?

The breeding objective depends on the turfgrass species and the environment for which it is intended.

For professional turf, areas of interest can include:

Disease tolerance

Diseases can affect turf quality, appearance and playing performance.

Greater genetic tolerance does not remove the need for good turf management, but it can contribute to an integrated approach to maintaining healthier turf.

Drought tolerance

Water is an increasingly important consideration for turf managers.

Cultivars capable of performing more effectively when water is limited can become particularly valuable where irrigation is restricted, expensive or difficult to provide.

Wear performance

Sports surfaces may experience repeated and intensive wear.

Breeding and cultivar selection can help identify grasses capable of maintaining turf quality under those conditions.

Adaptation to different climates

Turfgrass is grown across widely differing environments.

Temperature, rainfall, light intensity and length of growing season can all influence cultivar performance.

A cultivar suited to one region may therefore not automatically be the best option elsewhere.

Turf quality

Performance is not purely about survival.

Density, growth habit, leaf characteristics, color and overall visual quality can all be important depending on whether the turf is intended for golf, sports, sod production or another professional use.

Why small genetic improvements matter

A 10–15-year development period may seem long when each generation of breeding produces relatively small improvements.

But turfgrass performance rarely depends on one dramatic characteristic.

Instead, value can come from combining improvements across several traits.

A cultivar with stronger disease tolerance may help reduce disease pressure within an integrated management program.

Improved drought tolerance may help turf maintain performance when water availability is limited.

Better wear characteristics may help a sports surface cope with a demanding playing schedule.

Over time, incremental genetic improvement can therefore provide turf managers with grasses better suited to the pressures placed on modern turf surfaces.

Why cultivars need to be evaluated in different conditions

Developing promising genetics is only part of the process.

Cultivars also need to be evaluated to understand where they perform best.

Independent programs such as the US National Turfgrass Evaluation Program provide comparative information across different locations, while national and regional trial programs offer further evidence of turfgrass performance.

However, climate and management conditions vary considerably.

A cultivar performing well under warm, high-light conditions may respond differently in a cooler environment with lower light levels or heavy winter wear.

For that reason, ICL uses information from independent evaluation alongside its own cultivar screening work in the Netherlands and practical evaluation with turf managers.

The objective is not simply to identify cultivars that perform well somewhere.

It is to understand where their particular characteristics are most useful.

From breeding program to professional turf

ICL works with specialist breeding partners in Europe and the US, including Den Haan Zaden and Mountain View Seeds.

Access to different genetic sources allows a wide range of candidate cultivars to be considered for the ProSelect grass seed portfolio.

ICL then evaluates potential cultivars to understand their characteristics, how they respond under relevant turf conditions and how they compare with other available genetics.

Some may ultimately be offered as straight cultivars.

Others may become components of ProSelect mixtures, where different cultivars or species are combined to provide a broader set of characteristics.

The result is a link between long-term plant breeding and the practical decisions turf managers make when selecting seed.

What this means when choosing grass seed

The species named on a grass seed bag tells only part of the story.

Within that species, cultivar genetics can influence characteristics including disease tolerance, drought response, wear performance, density, appearance and adaptation to particular growing environments.

That is why cultivar choice matters.

The years invested in breeding, selection and evaluation are ultimately about giving turf managers better genetic options for the conditions they need to manage.

ICL’s ProSelect portfolio brings together cultivars selected from international breeding programs and evaluated for their relevance to professional turf.

When choosing seed, look beyond the species and mixture percentages and consider the cultivars themselves — because that is where much of the performance potential originates.