seminar

I’ve been invited to give a lecture about turfgrass selection and management in Okinawa and the Ryukyu Islands. This Ocean Expo Research Center Special Lecture will be held on 24 August from 13:30 to 15:00 at the Ocean Expo Park.

Yesterday’s seminar at Osaka was last of six seminars I’ve done this winter in the Turf Science Seminar 2011 series (ターフ・サイエンス・セミナー2011) at Tokyo and Osaka. These intensive full day seminars covered topics such as the effect of temperature on photosynthesis and photorespiration, the role of nitrogen in controlling the growth rate of the grass, the development and application of growth potential models for turfgrass, and a review of the most interesting new turfgrass research from the past year.

I’ve been at Japan for two weeks this month and have given a series of seminars at Tokyo, Osaka, Fukuoka, and Hokkaido. Some of these seminars have been about why Japan is such a difficult place to grow cool-season grass.

On 14 and 15 December I gave seminars at Tokyo and Osaka, respectively, to audiences of greenkeepers who came for a full-day seminar about turfgrass science. It wasn’t just greenkeepers from those cities, in attendance, however; some greenkeepers traveled all the way from Niigata, Mie, and Yamaguchi to spend a day learning about new developments in turfgrass science that can be applied in their day-to-day work.

After last week’s Asian Amateur Championship at Kasumigaseki CC, I came to Okinawa for a meeting of the Okinawa Greenkeeper’s Association. The meeting was held at Unimat Okinawa Golf Club and I spoke about optimizing playing conditions for warm-season turf, the challenges of overseeding bermudagrass greens in the climate of Okinawa, and on my experiences working at the Masters, US Open, and Open Championship this year.

The third and concluding day of ATC’s Turf Science Seminar 2010 series was held on 15 April at Shinjuku. We discussed management of the turfgrass surface environment to create the desired playing surface.

I was at Japan this month for seminars at Osaka and Ishikawa (for Royal Turf Co.) and at Tokyo (in a seminar organized by Asian Turfgrass Center). At Osaka and Ishikawa, I spoke about successful interseeding of creeping bentgrass.