Enhancing turfgrass performance with biotechnology.

Turfgrasses play an important role in maintaining a healthy environment and enriching our lives. Not only does turf provide an aesthetically pleasing landscape feature or a functional surface for sporting events, turfgrass helps reduce soil erosion and agricultural runoff, and it absorbs carbon dioxide and ozone while releasing life-sustaining oxygen. Turfgrasses trap an estimated 12 million tons of dust each year and an average lawn has the cooling effect of about 10 tons of air conditioning (Beard and Green, 1994).