Jacklin Research Yields Coup Plant Breeder’s New Insect-Resistant Bluegrass Has Seed Company Seeing Green

When Jacklin Seed Co. hired Chinese plant breeder Suichang Sun two years ago, it gave him one charge: produce a Kentucky bluegrass that’s toxic to leaf-eating insects.

The Post Falls company might as well had asked Sun to walk on water.

As a seven-year veteran of Rutgers University’s Center for Turf Grass in New Jersey, Sun knew that Jacklin Seed was asking for a miracle.

Scientists for years had searched the globe to find the popular lawn seed with an insect and drought-resistant fungus built into the plant. Others had tried to artificially introduce the fungus into bluegrass.

But none of these events have ever occurred.

Until now.

In a breakthrough that could catapult Jacklin Seed to the top of the grass seed trade, Sun says he has successfully used a secret “micro-surgery” technique to breed dozens of bluegrass plants infected with the elusive endophyte fungus.

This friendly fungus is common in perennial ryegrass, tall fescue and other grasses that compete against Kentucky bluegrass. Its presence in the lawn seed could boost sales to homeowners, landscapers and golf course developers who increasingly demand insect-resistant, endophyte-infected lawns.

Endophyte, which releases toxic alkaloids that can sicken or kill cut worms, is unrelated to the nasty fungus that creates embarrassing fairy rings in lawns.

If Sun is able to bring endophyte-infected bluegrass to market, Jacklin Seed would beat dozens of researchers attempting the same thing elsewhere in a race that could be worth millions.

The seed, when it becomes commercially available in three to four years, could cut homeowners’ pesticide bill. Its natural drought tolerance also could reduce the need for farmers in Spokane and Kootenai counties to burn bluegrass fields every year.

“It’s a major breakthrough for turf grass, and definitely a marketing coup for Jacklin,” says Bill Johnston, a grass seed specialist for Washington State University’s College of Agriculture and Home Economics.

“No one’s been successful to do this, not that no one has tried,” says Johnston. “At Rutgers, I’ve heard they have a reward for whomever is first.”

Sun may win the prize, which Rutger’s officials say is $500. But Jacklin Seed could win the war for bluegrass dominance.

Jacklin Seed, which calls itself the nation’s No. 1 bluegrass producer, with $40 million in annual sales, believes Sun’s work is as important to the company as developing highspeed chips is to a semiconductor maker.

“If we don’t come up with new products all the time, we lose market share,” said research director Doug Brede, adding that the company spent nearly $1 million on endophyte research. “We’re doing this to maintain market share into the 21st century.”

Adds Jim Brooks, director of the Lawn Institute, a trade group based in Atlanta, Ga.: “If we could get bluegrass some way or another with endophyte in it, it would be wonderful. It would open up tremendous new markets.”

U.S. farmers produce about 60 million pounds of bluegrass seed annually, most of it in the Pacific Northwest, Jacklin Seed says. At current prices, the crop is worth $50 million to farmers.

But Jacklin Seed, a company of 130 people controlled by brothers Don, Doyle and Duane Jacklin, has bigger plans for its fungus-imbued lawn seeds. It wants to go after the growing market for tall fescue and ryegrass, varieties that perform well on dry, insect-prone lawns.

Endophyte-infected tall fescue and perennial ryegrasses last year netted farmers $124 million in Oregon, the nation’s leading producer.

Sun also has bred endophyte for the first time into creeping bentgrass, a popular variety for closely cropped putting greens.

Sun’s plants are growing in Jacklin Seed greenhouses and have yet to be tested in the field. There is a danger that, once exposed to the vagaries of unrestrained soil and weather, they will not pass the fungus on to the next generation. Sun won’t know the outcome until this summer or next.

Jacklin Seed hired Sun because he had a reputation as a dogged researcher who refused to give up, Brede said. Sun was trained at the South China Agriculture University before moving to Rutgers in 1985, where he began pursuing endophyte-infected bluegrass.

“Suichang knows what he’s doing,” says Jim White, an endophyte mycologist at Rutgers and friend of Sun’s.

Sun logged thousands of miles to collect plant samples, traveling with his microscope to Russia, Germany, Switzerland and China. He carried plants back to his hotel room, where he spent evenings hoping to find traces of the fungus.

“We searched everywhere,” Sun says. “But we only need one.”

Sun failed to locate endophyte naturally present in bluegrass, but he returned with several hybrid plants to pursue another course - transplanting endophyte cells from those plants into bluegrass. It took 10,000 inoculations before a bluegrass plant accepted the fungus.

“We’re not creating something to release into nature where it will do God-knows what,” Sun says. “This thing is natural.”

Sun has “perfected” his cell transfer so that one in 1,000 plants now accept the endophyte. The odds of success are getting good enough that Sun has begun to joke about losing his job at Jacklin Seed now that he’s met the owner’s challenge.

“There was a lot of pressure on Suichang from the owners,” says Glenn Jacklin. “The 3-Ds (Jacklin brothers) said ‘get endophyte into bluegrass. Make it happen.”’

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo