SGT

Barenbrug aims to develop seed cultivars and grass seed mixes that respond to customers’ needs and a changing climate. Our Sustainable Grass Technology (SGT) products are designed to reduce the chemical, fertiliser and water input for turf managers.

Products under the SGT banner promise stress-tolerant grass for sustainable turf management and are the result of years of independent and in-house trials.

Barenbrug’s SGT products have been tested extensively, and offer exceptional performance in one or more of four pillars of research:

• Nitrogen-use efficiency to reduce fertiliser use and cost
• Drought tolerance to increase survival and reduce the need for irrigation in stress periods
• Increased disease tolerance to reduce the need for fungicide
• Lower biomass production (or clipping yield) to reduce mowing frequency, man hours and fuel use

Learn more about our SGT technology on our YouTube channel, where our mini-series covers: what SGT is, the challenges it addresses, our SGT products, where to use them, and how to apply them. - click the link here.

Drought tolerance

The SGT products are curated from specially chosen cultivars. In drought trials at Landlab in Italy and Barenbrug breeding stations, hard fescue always out-performs red fescue in periods of heat and drought (Fig. 1). The species features strongly in both SGT Rye Fairway and SGT Fine Fescue.

Included in SGT Fine Fescue for 2025 are two new cultivars of hard fescue, Barlegant and Beacon. Barlegant offers a new standard of turf quality for the species and is listed as the new #1 cultivar in Table L6 of Turfgrass Seed 2025; Beacon is not far behind in the #2 position.

In the GEVES Turfgrass List (independent trials in several European countries), Beacon is #1-ranked for hard and sheep’s fescue for a range of traits, including Lawn Index, Global Aesthetics, Shoot Density, Wear Tolerance and Red Thread Tolerance. The introduction of these two new cultivars cements SGT Fine Fescue in its market-leading position for overseeding links and heathland fairways.

Nitrogen Efficiency

In SGT Rye Fairway, Barprium offers proven capacity for nitrogen-use efficiency, requiring up to 50% less nitrogen. In an 18 month STRI trial (shown in Fig. 2), results demonstrate nitrogen efficiency from a number of cultivars against live ground cover. Barprium delivers the highest mean turf cover compared to all other cultivars. Put simply, it requires far less N to deliver equivalent turf performance.

STRI researchers concluded: “The best performing cultivar in this trial was Barprium, with good turf quality and coverage observed at all N levels and N types. Even at very low levels of N, Barprium still showed good quality and coverage.”

Barprium is highly ranked in the BSPB Turfgrass Seed 2025 booklet with a mean score of 7.4 on Table L1 and exhibits strong summer colour – another useful characteristic for low-input golf fairways.

Products available in the SGT range include SGT Rye Fairway and SGT Fine Fescue, representing the culmination of many years of research and targeted at golf course fairway overseeding to combat the effects of climate change and reduce future maintenance inputs.

Disease Tolerance

Disease tolerance is an increasingly important focus of Barenbrug’s turfgrass breeding programme for Europe. SGT products contain cultivars that have the highest levels of protection against a range of relevant pathogens.

Hard fescue as a species has excellent tolerance to Dollar Spot, which is an increasing concern, particularly on links courses. Figure 3 has data from recent NTEP trials, showing that hard and sheep’s offers higher levels of tolerance on average compared to the red fescue sub-species. Overseeding fairways with SGT Fine Fescue is likely to be a good option to improve fairway performance against Dollar Spot.

Red Thread is a common turfgrass disease affecting sustainably managed turf areas, such as fairways. SGT mixtures contain highly ranked cultivars for Red Thread tolerance, such as Barrisse (#1-ranked; Table L5) and Barjessica (#2-ranked; Table L5) strong creeping red fescues Barcrown (#1-ranked; Table L4) and Barpearl (#3-ranked; Table L4) and new cultivars Barnoustie (#4-ranked) and Barquess (#5-ranked) respectively.

The designated SGT perennial ryegrass Barprium not only delivers benefits in terms of drought tolerance, nitrogen-use efficiency and lower biomass production, but it also exhibits broad tolerance to a wide range of disease pathogens including Drechslera leaf spot, GLS and Rhizoctonia.

Disease Factfiles

To find out more and download your free copies, go to our Sport Resources section.