New Design...Same Old Problems

If you have visited the Turf Disease blog in the past, then you will notice that the layout and overall look has changed. A few of the things that are new include:

1. Information buttons (top right): These buttons serve various purposes, but mainly allow you to access the blog by RSS subscribtion or via twitter, view disease images on our new flickr Turf Disease group, or share this information with others through Digg It, Stumble, and Technorati.

2. Search bar (top right): A search bar has been added that allows you to search the site for any topic that you may be interested in.

3. Navigation buttons (bottom left of header): We have added navigation buttons to help you select the content that is appropriate for you. These buttons include links to the home page and to each regional update section (NE = Northeast; SE = Southeast, etc).

4. Image Gallery: Perhaps the most useful addition is the image gallery link which contains various disease symptoms and pathogen signs that are used for identification purposes. We are contstantly working to increase the number of images in the gallery and will add more diseases as photos become availabe.

5. Disease Poll (right column): In an attempt to get the superintendents more involved in the blog, we will periodically post a poll to find out what troubles most are seeing in the field each week or other questions related to turfgrass disease management. Results of the poll are presented in real-time and this gives everyone some indication of what others may be seeing.

OK, as for diseases in the Northeast:

As you might expect, the warm weather and periodic rains are creating conditions favorable for your typical summer time diseases. Brown patch and Pythium are high on the list of potential problems in the field. While others may have seen summer patch for the several weeks, the first case that I had seen all year was last week in Pittsburgh. Also active in the Pittsburgh region was dollar spot and leaf spot.

Following a visit to the Buffalo area, last week was met with some cool morning temperatures and disease activity was relatively low. The only issues noticed was some dollar spot activity in the rough. The 10-day forecast has low and high daily temperatures of 60 and 80, respectively for that region. Throughout much of the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast, temperatures run a steady gradient from the upper 80s-90F in the Maryland region to the upper 70's-80F in Portland, ME. Along with these higher temperatures is the threat of precipitation which should bring along some serious disease pressure as we head into the home stretch of the season.

KEEP in mind that the threat of rain that can disrupt your ability to make preventive or curative applications should be monitored. Your window of opportunity to target serious diseases throughout August may be short and you should take advantage of any chance you get to take action.

Kansas field day, plant path conference: turf&donuts

1) FIELD DAY

Thanks to everyone who participated in the KSU Turf Field Day in Wichita yesterday. The JC Pair Hort Center was looking fantastic thanks to Dr. Jason Griffin, his staff, and many volunteers. Though it was sprinkling, we were still able to move everyone through the 8 stops. The lightning was menacing by the end and I was happy to move inside and out of danger for lunch--Apparently my hair was sticking up due to static in the air so I was feeling particularly vulnerable. Unfortunately, due to the rain, I didn’t take my camera out to take photos at the event but I saw a few others snapping pics and maybe I can include those later.

As I mentioned at field day, my “top 5” list of plant problems (turf & ornamental) so far in 2009 are:

* root problems due to saturated soils (all plants, from turf to trees to flowers to vegetables)
* brown patch in turf
* cedar apple rusts
* pine problems in general
* Pythium blight in turf


2) SLOW SPELL IN THE LAB

It was actually pretty quiet while I was out of town over the last week. Mild weather has kept the usual stress issues in check. Today and the next few days will be hot, though, so I suspect a few calls will be coming next week.


3) APS MEETING

Like my colleagues have mentioned this week, I spent Aug 1-5 at the national plant pathology conference. What do we do at these conferences (other than eat donuts)? It’s an opportunity for plant pathologists from across the US (and other nations) to get together and talk about recent and ongoing research and to discuss potential projects. People give presentations (usually 15 or 30 minutes) about their work, or they prepare posters (about 3 x 4 feet) to display research findings. The posters (nearly 900) are displayed in a big hall and authors are present at various times. That way, a viewer can stop by, read through a poster, then stop back and meet the author later to ask specific questions.

On the turf side, we had posters and presentations about a variety of topics. Here are some examples (of many):

*There are some new diseases popping up in Florida on warm-season grasses, as Jim mentioned. The researchers are trying to get a handle on the identification of the pathogen.

*There’s also a new leaf spot that has shown up in Mississippi and south Texas on bermudagrass and zoysia.

*Researchers in Arkansas showed some maps of large patch disease in zoysia. From the mapping at one site, it looks like aerification while disease is active definitely spread the disease around.

* Researchers in North Carolina (Lane’s group) are examining the influence of several fertility practices on spring dead spot in bermudagrass.

*On the more “basic” (lab) side of things, researchers at Ohio State are examining proteins that are secreted by the dollar spot fungus and how they might interact with plants at the cellular/molecular level.

That’s just a small sampling. I don’t have the energy right now to include more. Maybe we can explain more stuff later as we post more things to this blog.


Along with the formal presentations and posters, we had a turf meeting where we decided to try to arrange a symposium specifically about new Rhizoctonia diseases in turf for 2010. There are several groups around the US trying to characterize some new Rhizoc diseases in turf and there is a lot to talk about. At the 2010 planning meeting later in the week, I was pleased to discover that the ornamentals committee is also interested in some new Rhizocs in their commodities, and we will try to work with them to make a full day.


3) Donuts

Frank mentioned Voodoo Donuts in his posting. Try to match the pathologist from this blog with the donut(s) they consumed:

Pathologist:

1) Frank Wong
2) Lane Tredway
3) Jim Kerns
4) John Kaminski
5) Megan Kennelly

Donuts

A) pink bubble-gum flavor (this one was hard to choke down. The consumer started choking like they had a hairball)
B) glazed maple with big strips of bacon on top
C) chocolate cake doughnut covered with pink marshmallow glaze and peanut-butter filling
D) cream-filled with chocolate glaze
E) Triple chocolate (chocolate donut, chocolate glaze, covered with cocoa-puffs)
F) Chocolate with Butterfinger
G) Missed donut experience due to Chile trip (missed you, buddy)

Widespread Death & Destruction in Portland? No. Beer and Doughnuts? Por supuesto.

As you already know, many of the plant pathologists in the U.S. were in Portland this last week at the American Phytopathology Society meetings. As mentioned last week - Phil Harmon (Florida), Bruce Martin (Clemson) and Shanna Mazurek (North Dakota State) joined me on a quick tour of Portland Golf Club and Waverly Country Club on Saturday morning before the meeting. With temps in the 100s earlier in the week and a lot of wall to wall annual bluegrass - I was expecting to see nothing but brown up here. Arriving at PDX - I could see lots of dead grass from the air. However, on Saturday morning, I was very (pleasantly) surprised to see awesomely good course conditions at both Portland GC and Waverly CC. Thanks again to Forrest Goodling and John Alexander for the day and Gordon Kiyokawa for setting us up.


Forrest Goodling (Portland GC) - it was so hot recently that the thermometer couldn't even keep up with the 100+ degree weather.


The view of the club house at Portland GC - watching the weather and timely irrigation kept the Poa green during the hot hot heat.


Bruce, Shanna and Phil on the Willamette River - you can see what happened to a lot of grass in the PNW during the heat wave if it wasn't cared for.


John Alexander (Waverley CC) "schooling" Bruce on annual bluegrass and billbug damage.


John Alexander showing off some of the wickedly sloped (and fast) greens at Waverley.

Overall it was a great time seeing the courses and having Forrest and John share with us their experiences and expertise on turfgrass in Portland.

APS Annual Meeting (www.apsnet.org)
As far as the meeting - I have to admit, I did not spend all of my time discussing turf while there. I was mainly wearing one of my other "hats" and focusing on new fungicides and fungicide resistance development in agricultural crops. I am hoping that Megan can give us a summary of some of the cool turf stuff (other than what Jim already mentioned yesterday about the work being done by Steve Kammerer and Phi Harmon) from the meeting.

Two things to note (1) just to make things even more complicated, the name 'Chrysorhiza' is going to be more frequently associated with 'Waitea' and 'brown ring patch' - but for good reason (2) I'm "officialy" going to be working more and more with the EPA in Washington DC on fungicide resistance issues starting in January as part of a fellowship and sabbatical in 2010. More to follow on both in the weeks to come.

Beer and Doughnuts
Portland definitely lived up to its reputation for beer and doughnuts on this trip. With over 100 microbreweries - I tried my best to sample as much of the local brew as possible. One night was even punctuated with a late night run to Voodoo Donuts - I wish I had some better pictures - but unfortunately - all my iphone camera could capture in the dark were images like the one below - but the picture does the situation justice. After a very very very long day of plant pathology talks and a few microbrews - my own world pretty much looked like what was captured by this camera.


Paul Koch (Univ. Wisconsin), Lane, and Damon Smith (Oklahoma State) out on a late night donut run. Missing: Brandon Horvath (Tennesee) holding a big pink box (of doughnuts).

I'm very lucky to be working with such a great group of turf pathologists from around the country, they really do play hard and work harder. Most importantly - it was a great meeting and opportunity to discuss turf disease issues from across the country.

Meanwhile, Back in Cali....
Naveen has definitely been using the bat-phone this week. She reports that the diagnostic lab is getting slammed in Riverside. Anthracnose and heat stress are very common on cool season turf. Root infecting diseases like Kikuyugrass/Bermudagrass decline and soil diseases like fairy ring are also showing up because of the effects of summer stress. I think the blast of heat we had in a few locations is catcing up with us.

Weather wise - it's definitey cooled down this week (no Pythium alert outside of Coachella), but still expect to see the typical summer diseases inland and dollar spot/brown ring patch on the very moderate coastal locations (70s-80s).

Signing off from Top-Pot Doughnuts in Seattle (that's another story),

- Frank

Coolest July on Record!

Well the big news from the Midwest is we just experienced the coolest July on record! I guess you can imagine that there is not a lot of disease activity. Dollar spot is progressing, but very slowly. Even at one particular site in Milwaukee that is usually a petri plate for dollar spot, the disease has been very slow to develop.

We have had some brown ring patch come through the lab recently and most people in the Midwest are able to clean that disease up with an application of Endorse or Prostar. Dr. Frank Wong has also shown that applications of nitrogen fertilizers also help to alleviate brown ring patch symptoms.

This post will be a little short because I have just returned from Portland where I attended the American Phytopathological Society meetings. Another fantastic meeting! I will let Frank elaborate on the fun sites :)! There were some excellent talks and posters. One talk I thoroughly enjoyed was by Steve Kammerer who is at the University of Florida. I know we do not grow warm-season grasses, but nonetheless Steve and Dr. Phil Harmon may be instramental in renaming or changing Rhizoctonia classification. Great job guys. For those growing warm-season grasses and are struggling with something a little weird, you might want to get in touch with Dr. Harmon or Steve.

One final note, this weekend is projected to be quite warm in the Midwest, so if you have not sprayed for dollar spot in a while tomorrow or Friday may be a good time.

Pythium, algae, brown patch, flooding and more

I returned from the International Turfgrass Society meetings on Friday afternoon and was greeted to a slew of new diseases in the region. At the research facility, algae and brown patch were taking off due to the recent rains and high temperatures. The recent rains were not without their own problems as it caused major flooding at various golf courses in the region. Most notably, Merion Golf Club had many bunkers wash out and even had holes under water for a period of time (Image of hole #11 fairway and green, courtesy Matt Shaffer). Also hanging on in many regions is the Type II fairy ring species on both putting greens and fairways. I have yet to see these rings collapse in the Northeast, but it is likely that some superintendents are dealing with more severe cases.

Dr. Landschoot indicated that Pythium blight was also active on his fine leaf fescue variety trials. Although I hadn't seen any Pythium around the facility, I did notice that half of my Kentucky bluegrass lawn was wiped out on the side of my house. This area receives little light or air movement and has a swale that carries the water from about 10 properties away from entering my basement!

Overall, I would say that this summer has been a cake walk as far as disease and heat problems are concerned. Although we are not completely out of the woods, we are getting close.

On the lookout...I have not heard any reports of gray leaf spot yet, but this is one disease that is likely just around the corner and preventive treatments should now be close or in place already depending on your location.

Do you have anything happening at your course worth sharing? If so, feel free to add your story to the comments section or send images to be included in a future posting!

OH! I almost forgot, everyone keep an eye out for Frank Wong's posting this week from the American Phytopathology Society Meetings in Portland. I hear they are seeing some interesting things in the streets of Portland this week!