Abstract
An online surveywas conducted to investigate the current practices of and challenges for turfgrass breeders and turfgrass seed distributors (or sales staff) in the United States. We found that turfgrass seed breeders rated producers/growers and consumers as more important parties compared with other interested parties. However, variations in ratings were found for breeders/distributors according to different program characteristics. The volume of seed sales of the species was the most highly rated technical consideration for both breeders and distributors. Compared with distributors, breeders considered the following technical factors more important than others: funding, labor, field trial performance, diversity in working priorities, availability of germplasms, scheduling, and staff training. Costs, followed by resource allocation and resource availability, were rated as the most challenging factors when breeders were implementing priorities. Our findings provide important insight regarding breeding and distribution practices and management in the turfgrass industry.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 129-135 |
| Number of pages | 7 |
| Journal | HortScience |
| Volume | 54 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jan 2019 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:Received for publication 27 June 2018. Accepted for publication 25 Sept. 2018. This material is based on work that is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Specialty Crops Research Initiative under award numbers 2012-51181-19932 and 2017-51181-27222. 1Professor, Bachman Endowed Chair in Horticultural Marketing. 2Graduate student. 3Professor. 4Corresponding author. E-mail: yuechy@umn.edu.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019, American Society for Horticultural Science. All rights reserved.
Keywords
- Breeding priority
- Marketing
- Turfgrass seeds