Natural turf still unbeatable!

The discussion on artificial versus natural grass football pitches continues to generate strong feelings. Lex van der Weerd international product manager of the Royal Barenbrug Group is adamant that natural turf is unbeatable. He explains why.

Football has been played on real grass for more than 100 years and despite the fact that UEFA and FIFA are rather emphatically supporting the introduction of synthetic turf for football, natural turf still offers more advantages to the players, football stadia and last but not least the environment.

People should not forget that the genetic progress made to natural grasses is as spectacular as the developments made in artificial turf. Because artificial turf for football is new and more ‘fancy’ to talk or write about, it gets much more attention in the media. However, the advantages are still very much in favour of natural turf. It is doubtful if artificial grass will ever become better than natural grass.

Grass breeders, like Barenbrug, anticipated this new development and set new goals for their sports grass breeding programmes to counter the threat from artificial surfaces. The main reasons for looking at synthetic pitches as an alternative for natural turf was: insufficient winter performance (wear and growth), shade problems (stadium design), heat stress problems (hot climates) and the limited number of playing hours per year. For all these problems artificial turf could be the solution (without taking into consideration the different playing characteristics and other drawbacks of artificial grass) but the progress made in grass breeding has resulted in successful solutions to most of these ‘problems’.
Improved winter performance
Due to the introduction of new varieties and new species the winter performance of grass has improved considerably. Selecting perennial ryegrass varieties with more focus on this aspect (winter wear + growth under reduced light intensity) has produced better adapted varieties. The new species Deschampsia caespitosa, cultivar Barcampsia, offers a denser turf with excellent winter hardiness and remarkably early spring greening up. Moreover, Barcampsia is also highly shade tolerant, making it also valuable for shaded pitches.
Shade problems
As well as Barcampsia, Barenbrug has also successfully introduced Tall fescue (Festuca arundinacea) for shaded areas. The best evidence of the advantages of this cultivar is found at the Amsterdam Arena stadium in the Netherlands. This pitch has changed from being one of the worst to now being one of the best. This has been achieved by bringing together knowledge, expertise and the right grasses!
We have also discovered huge differences in shade tolerance between Perennial ryegrass varieties. This has resulted in the release of mixtures such as Bar Stadia, that includes these adapted ryegrasses for problematical pitches.

Barenbrug is also participating in the SGL-Concept. For stadiums suffering from severe shade problems or lacking any winter growth this is a successful system of assimilation lighting. Trials during winter in the Sunderland stadium proved the value of this concept; producing a dense, wear tolerant winter pitch. In the coming year the first SGL-Concept will be installed in major European football stadiums.
Heat stress tolerance
It’s so wrong to think that natural turf can’t perform in hot climates. Usually the reason given is lack of water in such areas, but people seem to forget that artificial turf needs to be sprayed with water too! In fact, in hot climates natural turf absorbs heat (synthetic turf reflects the heat), which is a very important factor for the health of players. Despite the very hot temperatures in Portugal (> 35 degrees Celcius) during Euro 2004, all the grass pitches have performed very well.

Barenbrug has many years experience of supplying grasses for sports fields in Africa, the Middle East and China. Thanks to our network of breeding stations in different climatic zones we are able to provide adapted grasses that perform in hot climates.
Limited number of playing hours
A conventional natural turf pitch can withstand 250-400 hours play a year. Good groundmanship and management play a very large part in determining the number of hours that can be achieved successfully. The artificial grass industry boast about 1,000 ‘usage’ hours (or even more!) per year for their products. This 1,000 hours a year is very theoretical, because in practice the average use of an intensively played pitch is somewhere between 400 and 600 hours a year. In these circumstances, where the amount of play is this high, it is much better to choose a hybrid system. This means a combination of natural and artificial grass. One good example is the Desso.

GrassMaster System. A GrassMaster pitch contains three per cent fibres and the rest is natural grass. This means a Desso pitch can handle up to 700-750 hours play because the fibre improves the wear tolerance and stability of the pitch and protects the grass plants. In the past such systems were susceptible to compaction of the top layer, resulting in many problems. However, thanks to the introduction of new machinery in the market (Topfieldmaker) a GrassMaster pitch can be renovated with success and compaction problems are solved. By combining Barenbrug’s best sports field mixtures and this system it is possible to obtain excellent wear tolerant and long lasting usable pitches.

Although grass breeding is a time-consuming activity, it is clear that the progress made by the natural grass industry in the last five years is impressive.. We are convinced that natural turf has a bright future and with the help of our partners in the industry and last but not least the help of dedicated groundmans we will prove it.

Too bad UEFA and FIFA do not demonstrate the same enthusiasm for the natural product as they do for synthetic turf. Football players prefer to play on natural turf but both organisations are supporting another alternative. An alternative, which has more ‘problems’ to solve than many people are aware of!