Turf grass rather than relay teams, butterfly strokes or the 400-meter dash, will be the ticket to the Olympics for several Michigan State University (MSU) professors.
MSU’s world-renowned turf scientists are going to construct a portable athletic field for the 91,000-seat Beijing National Stadium. The turf will support the main track and field competitions and the gold metal soccer match.
The MSU turf team, led by MSU professor John “Trey”Rogers, is building and managing more than 5,500 modules of Kentucky bluegrass that’s located about five miles from the new stadium.
After the Aug. 8 opening ceremony, each module will be moved into the stadium. The modules are 1,100 pounds each.
“It has a wide range of applications,” Rogers says about the turf grass. “If they were going to do a renovation at a high school field in Lansing, Michigan, for example, we would use these same principles.”
Rogers first introduced the portable turf at the 1994 World Cup.
Since 2003, MSU has had an agreement with several Chinese universities to develop and deliver a turf grass management program in China for Chinese students. The universities include Sichuan Agricultural University, Ya’an, Sichuan Province; Northeast Agricultural University, Harbin, Heilonggjiang Province; and Beijing Forestry University, Beijing, Beijing Province.
Ivy Hughes, development news editor, can be reached here.
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