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 particular species and 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 launch of SGT All Hard for 2026 allows end-users to focus efforts in overseeding gains in this species, and hard fescue also features strongly in both SGT Fine Fescue and SGT Rye Fairway.

Integral in SGT All Hard and SGT Fine Fescue for 2026 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 2026; 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 Lawn Index. The introduction of these two new cultivars cements SGT products in their market-leading position for overseeding golf 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 2026 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 represent 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 All Hard or 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 strong creeping red fescues Barrisse (#1-ranked; Table L5) and Barjessica (#3-ranked; Table L5), slender creeping red fescues Barnoustie (#4-ranked), and Chewings red fescue Nightclub (#2-ranked).

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

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