The symbiosis between tall fescue (Festuca arundinaceum) and a shoot-specific fungal endophyte (Neotyphodium coenophialum) has been relatively well studied but little attention has been given to how this relationship may impact the soil microbial community. Understanding how the symbiosis may structure soil microbial communities is important for understanding the cascade of effects that this sy...

Heat stress is a major problem in transporting stocker calves with symptoms of fescue toxicosis. Removing calves from tall fescue pastures and offering diets devoid of endophyte-infected tall fescue could reduce the severity of toxicosis and precondition calves for transport to the feedlot. In the present experiment, a pasture phase was used to condition yearling steers to grazing tall fescue a...

cultivar Paiute, which originated from a single plant introduction (PI-109072) (Alderson and Sharp, 1994), Within the Great Basin, availability of irrigation water throughout very little breeding has been done to develop improved the growing season is the limiting factor in the development of improved pastures. The choice of species and their water requirements cultivars of cool-season perennia...

Surface temperatures of hoofs of calves given toxic anion fractions of tall fescue were measured with an infrared sensitive camera. These changes expressed in terms of a weighted average coronary band temperature relate to clinical signs of fescue foot. The weighted average coronary band temperature values for control calves given saline solution were 27 to 31 C; those values of test calves giv...

Increasing plant diversity in the perennial phase of pasture-crop rotations is predicted to positively affect belowground productivity and microbial communities and, turn, augment agroecosystem services including soil health carbon storage. Using two grass one legume forage species grown as monocultures combined four intercropped combinations, we evaluated how identity richness influence produc...

Chaparral herbicide has shown in small-plot experiments to suppress seed head emergence in tall fescue. A two-yr grazing experiment is being conducted with steers grazed on endophyte-infected tall fescue pastures that are either treated or untreated with Chaparral herbicide. The objective of the experiment is to determine if suppression of seed head emergence and maturity can increase average d...

Blissus occiduus Barber is an important pest of buffalograss, Buchloë dactyloides (Nuttall) Engelmann, turf. No-choice studies documented the susceptibility of selected turfgrasses, crops, and weeds to B. occiduus feeding. Highly to moderately susceptible grasses included buffalograss; yellow Setaria glauca (L.) and green foxtail Setaria viridis (L.); Kentucky bluegrass, Poa pratensis L.; peren...

To address the problem of fescue toxicosis in grazing cattle, non-toxic endophytes from New Zealand have been used to infect tall fescue varieties grown in Georgia. The objectives of the present study were to determine animal performance and evaluate toxicosis in stocker steers and heifers grazing non-toxic endophyte-infected (AR542), endophyte-free (EF), or wild-type endophyte-infected (EI) Je...

Epichloë typhina, a clavicipitaceous systemic phytopathogen, was isolated from two varieties and three hybrids of tall fescue (Festuca arundinaceae). The morphology of the fescue isolates was compared with E. typhina isolated from bent grass (Agrostis perennans). In all isolates, conidia were identical and were typical of E. typhina. In fescue grasses the endophyte failed to produce stromata, b...