TifQuik Bahia Grass Seed is a newly-released, improved variety of Bahia Grass Seed. TifQuick Bahia doesn't contain as many hard seeds or dormant seeds, providing quick establishment. TifQuick Bahia greens up faster in the spring than Tifton 9 Bahiagrass or Pensacola Bahiagrass, providing early grazing, increased pasture forage and hay production. TifQuik Bahia has shown to germinate in soil temps as low as 55 Forage growers would naturally like to get the jump on weeds and extend their forage-production season. So Agricultural Research Service geneticist Bill Anderson and his colleagues at the Crop Genetics and Breeding Research Unit—in Tifton, GA—have developed a new Bahiagrass (Paspalum notatum) cultivar that may help them do just that. Released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the University of Georgia (UGA), TifQuik has great promise as a forage grass in the Southeast. Currently, Tifton 9 Bahiagrass, another USDA/UGA variety, developed by the late Glenn Burton (an ARS Hall of Fame member) is widely grown for forage, with good results. But the TifQuik cultivar is even better. One of the benefits to Tifquik versus Hancock's Argentine or Pensacola Bahia grasses is that it will grow much faster, featuring a blade that is much thinner than Argentina. For this reason it provides more forage for herds.  “TifQuik was developed to have reduced hard seed and thus faster germination and field establishment than Tifton 9,” says Anderson. “These features mean that a TifQuik-seeded pasture will be covered earlier, and grazing or hay removal can be performed sooner—with higher initial yields.” The Bahiagrass cultivars now grown have a considerable amount of hard seed, and thus require 2 to 3 weeks to establish a full stand. Weeds may infest the pasture during this time, and moisture for forage seed germination may be restricted. In developing TifQuik, the sole criterion for selection of plants was fast germination. It took four years to achieve these desired qualities. Former ARS agronomist Roger Gates and retired geneticist Wayne Hanna performed the four selection cycles, beginning with Tifton 9. Enough seed was planted from the previous one during each cycle to obtain 1,000 seedlings that germinated within the first week. Seedlings were transplanted to clay pots in the greenhouse, and then to a fumigated field to establish a nursery. Plants were allowed to cross-pollinate, seed was hand-harvested, and that seed was then used to start the final cycle the following Spring, again in a greenhouse. The four cycles were completed in 2002, and the seed from 2002 was used to establish greenhouse germination tests and a replicated field test and to begin seed increase. In the greenhouse studies, germination of TifQuik averaged five times more than Tifton 9 after 6 days and three times more after 8 days. In the field studies, TifQuik emerged about 75 percent faster after 1 week than Tifton 9 and Pensacola, another commonly used forage Bahiagrass. TifQuik plants were taller than both Tifton 9 and Pensacola after four weeks. Dry-matter yields of TifQuik were two times higher than Tifton 9, and four times higher than Pensacola for the first clipping, which was done two months after planting. “TifQuik will be particularly valuable to growers who wish to include Bahiagrass in a sod-based rotation system with row crops such as peanut and cotton in the southeastern United States,” says Anderson. “Bahiagrass has been shown to reduce nematode and disease problems in subsequent crops, and it should provide many forage growers with another tool to make their operations more efficient and, hopefully, more profitable,” says Sharon Durham, an Agricultural Research Service Information staffer. One of the benefits to Tifquik versus Hancock's Argentine or Pensacola Bahia grasses is that it will grow much faster, featuring a blade that is much thinner than Argentina. For this reason it provides more forage for herds.  This research is part of Rangeland, Pasture, and Forages, an ARS national program (#205) described at www.nps.ars.usda.gov. Rave Reviews It's no secret why Tifquik Bahia Grass Seed is so popular. The answer is "because it works"! Here one really great review that came in from a clients who has planted Tifquik Bahia Grass Seed: "I love TifQuik," says Olivia C., plainly. "In past years we tried seeding our pasture with other grasses with no success. After reading about TifQuik, we decided to give it a try. My husband disked the field and it took about four to five weeks to come up. Once up, it grew really fast and was up to grazing height in about a month. We let our horses out on it for a few hours one day to see if they would pull it up by the roots, but they did not. So, we started letting them graze for four to five hours a day and the TifQuik bounced right back. We have a huge oak tree in the middle of the pasture, and the grass is growing fine in the shade. We live in Middle Georgia and are currently in a drought. The other grass turned yellow and dried out, but the TifQuik stayed green. We did have a small patch that started looking dry from lack of water, so we watered it and it turned green again in a few hours. This is the first year we've had a green pasture for our horses. We are going to buy more next year and seed two more pastures.