The Farm Links Experience

This week will be spent traveling to Farm Links to hear the discussion on BASF's Intrinsic properties in their two products Insignia and Honor (Insignia + Emerald). The thought process behind this is that applications of either of these products with the "Intrinsic" label will help in managing stress. Leading up to the conference, many of the pathologists have been frantically emailing back and forth discussing the actual agronomic benefits from these products. Although the verdict is out, the discussion raised some key issues regarding the promotion of fungicides as stress reducers. Issues that need to be addressed is the potential overuse of these fungicides which could result in rapid resistance issues with several key pathogens. So the first part of this week will be spent with various pathologists, physiologists and just about the entire USGA staff at Farm Links in Alabama discussing the issues. Hopefully someone else on the blog will be able to update you later this week on their take on the meeting.

While in Alabama, we were able to spend time on the golf course which is a teaching/research facility and has various species throughout including zoysia, paspalum, bermudagrass, and bentgrass. Unfortunately, we didn't see much disease on the course, but we did see that large patch was starting to show up fairly aggressively on the seashore paspalum (photo below). In listening to Dr. Harmon from the University of Florida it seems that paspalum gets just about every disease. I am sure that Micah Woods (our international blogger) sees many things on the seashore paspalum in his area.

Around the Northeast, temperatures are on the warm side as some front sites over the area. Although out of the loop in the area, I would suspect that dollar spot could still continue to be a problem. Aside from this, many are trying to determine what their plan of attack will be for their upcoming snow mold applications. To find out which products may work for the varying pressures you may see at your course, check out Dr. Kerns suggestions for PCNB substitutes here (pdf)

Aside from the trip to Alabama, I will be back in State College on Thursday and then head to Massachusetts for a talk at the NE-APS meeting on Friday for a talk on the implications/impact of the relatively large number of Pre-Mix fungicides on disease control in turf.