THE PRESS-ENTERPRISE - UC Riverside and a Riverside-based sod company have teamed up to sell a new drought-resistant bermuda grass.
The grass, called Coachella, is a less thirsty, greener-longer hybrid of bermuda grass.
The university’s Office of Technology Partnerships and West Coast Turf hope to initially target golf courses and sports stadiums that need large amounts of real grass.
It is the first bermuda grass to come from the university’s turfgrass breeding program, which was rebooted in 2012 after a long hiatus, a UCR news release states. It is the UC system’s only turfgrass program.
The grass “exhibits our targeted traits of improved winter color retention, exemplary drought resistance above and beyond most existing bermuda grass cultivars and, of course, exceptional quality characteristics,” Jim Baird, a UCR professor and cooperative extension specialist in turfgrass science, said in the Monday, Nov. 25, release.