Civitas Update....By Popular Demand

First, my apologies for the tardiness of this post. The pre-Thanksgiving travel crunch got the best of me last week, and of course I spent the entire weekend watching football and hockey, so I am just now getting caught up! Several people have asked what happened to the Civitas update, so here it is:

Civitas is a new product for disease and insect control in turfgrasses that was developed by Suncor, formerly known as PetroCanada. The active ingredient is mineral oil, otherwise known as 'horticultural oil', which has been used for management of plant pests for many years. It has just never been used in turf because of issues with phytotoxicity. However, Suncor developed a pigment product, called Harmonizer, that is mixed with Civitas to reduce the potential for phytotoxicity. The advantage of mineral oil as a fungicide is that it has very low environmental impacts due to its low toxicity and rapid breakdown in the environment.

Because it contains oil and pigment, Civitas has a very noticeable effect on the color and appearance of the turf. The Harmonizer pigment, depending on the application rate, is a very dark green, similar to that provided by an application of Triton Flo or Tartan. Some people have complained that transfer of the pigment to shoes and clothing has been a problem, but I haven't rolled around on our research plots yet to see how big of a problem that is.

The mineral oil component of Civitas also gives the turf a distinct greasy appearance, very similar to that caused by an application of a wetting agent like Cascade. This greasy appearance is most evident in the morning and persists for several days to a week after application. Because of these unique characteristics of Civitas, I suggest that people try it out on a nursery green or putting green before treating the whole course with it.

We've been evaluating Civitas for control of various turf diseases for three years now. For a summary of our previous results, please see my post from last year entitled Civitas shows promise for control of dollar spot and brown patch. Be sure to read the comments at the bottom provided by Wakar Uddin, Bruce Clarke, and others regarding their experiences with Civitas.

We continue to see similar results against dollar spot and brown patch in our trials. However, this year we ran into serious problems with phytotoxicity when Civitas and Harmonizer was tank-mixed with Daconil and Banner Maxx. The injury appeared very quickly after the first application in May and became more severe as time went on. As you can see in the graph to the left, it is also interesting to note that half rates of the mixture components did not reduce the amount of phytotoxicity observed. Based on this result, we definitely recommend that Civitas and Harmonizer should not be mixed with Daconil and Banner, or with other fungicides until we have the opportunity to evaluate more mixtures for their safety.

We haven't seen significant phytotoxicity from applications of Civitas and Harmonizer alone in our trials, but some users have reported injury during times of severe stress, with high temperatures consistently above 90F. It makes sense that it could create problems to coat the turf leaves in oil under these types of conditions.

To summarize, Civitas has good activity against several important turf diseases like dollar spot, brown patch, anthracnose, and leaf spot diseases. Although it does not provide acceptable control alone in most cases, my opinion is that it could be useful as part of a disease control program. Civitas and Harmonizer should not be mixed with other fungicides or applied to severely stressed turf, or severe injury could result. However, if you are interested in using products that pose less risk to environment, then Civitas is a good choice.

100,000 Page Views Reached!

Just a short post today to say THANK YOU to all of our readers out there in cyberspace. I hadn't checked in a while, but when I checked today, I realized that we had passed the 100,000 page views. Not sure if this is good or not, but I was impressed none the less.

 Thanks again for all of our readers and contributors and thanks to Syngenta who was our sole sponsor for the year. Their support of our Turfgrass Compendium Giveaway contest helped to raise money for the Student Travel Fund within the American Phytopathological Society which helps to offset travel costs for turfgrass pathology graduate students.

Renown: Broad Spectrum Activity via Azoxystrobin and Chlorothalonil

Ha! Megan was right. Sorry for not posting this on Thanksgiving day as per the schedule, but Wong Family Thanksgiving in Fresno is serious business and I was definitely passed out in a food coma by mid-afternoon. Soo....here's a Sunday post to make up for it.

Renown Fungicide - Broad Spectrum Control of Foliar Diseases
Renown is a fungicide pre-mix recently labeled by Syngenta for use in the U.S. The active ingredients in Renown are azoxystrobin and chlorothalonil, which are the active ingredients in Heritage and Daconil fungicides respectively. When it comes to broad spectrum activity, you can't get much broader spectrum than both of these two active ingredients. Azoxystrobin is a QoI that is effective against a number of ascomycete, basidiomycete and oomycete pathogens. Chlorothalonil, as you all know, pretty much takes care of most foliar pathogens (including algae) but not foliar Pythiums.

Renown has a wide range of activity against a number of diseases including: algae, anthracnose, brown patch, copper spot, dollar spot, gray leaf spot, large patch, stem rust, stripe rust, southern blight, yellow patch, yellow spot, zoysia patch, leaf rust, leaf & sheath spot, melting out, Microdochium patch, pink patch, powdery mildew and red thread.

Because azoxystrobin is a systemic fungicide while chlorothalonil is a contact, the best use of Renown would be for foliar disease control. Also, if the product is applied in 2 gal water per thousand, that should also be enough to cover diseases that reside in the thatch, mat or upper root zone on closely mowed turf types (i.e. grees and tees). When targeting deep soil and root infecting pathogens like fairy rings, it may be better to use a different fungicide this purpose. Watering-in a Renown application to get soil activity from the azoxystrobin component could cause you to lose the benefit of the chlorothalonil for foliar disease control.

Renown comes as a suspo-emulsion formulation containing 0.32 lbs of azoxystrobin and 4.84 lbs of chlorothalonil per gallon. Use rates are 2.5 to 4.5 fl oz which is equivalent to 1 fl oz Heritage TL plus 2 fl oz Daconil Weatherstik and 1.8 fl oz Heritage TL plus 3.6 fl oz Daconil Weatherstik, respectively.

Renown has looked very good in our anthracnose and pretty good for dollar spot as you can see in the next few slides.





Two applications of Renown also appeared to be effective in controlling brown ring patch in 2008 trials in San Diego: archive.lib.msu.edu/tic/gcman/article/2009aug74.pdf

The benefit for using Renown would be in the control of multiple diseases where the combination of azoxystrobin and chlorothalonil would put you at a distinct advantage. For example, when leaf spots and brown patch are active at the same time, or gray leaf spot and Southern Blight, etc. There are some specific situations where using Renown would also make sense as described below.

Fungicide resistance. For certain diseases like anthracnose and gray leaf spot, where QoI-resistance is a problem, the pre-mix would be of an advantage. For both of these diseases, QoI-resistance has been a problem in a lot of locations, but the addition of chlorothalonil in the application would help control those resistant isolates. For other diseases, where QoI-resistance is not yet a problem, the mixture would aid in helping to delay resistance due to the dual mode of action.

Dollar spot. Although the WG formulation of Heritage is not particularly effective vs. dollar spot, it appears that the liquid TL formulation has better activity against the disease. The additional of chlorothalonil would help in controlling the disease. This would be valuable when there are other diseases like brown patch are active.

Non-DMI for summer disease control. Renown can pick up a lot of the mid- & late-summer diseases you would face on cool season and warm season turf like leaf & sheath spot, melting out, anthracnose, etc. Although highly effective, there can be times in the summer when a non-DMI would be advantageous for use in these situations.

Keep in mind that applications of Renown count towards the yearly limit of chlorothalonil use on turf. Each application contains 1.5 to 2.7 oz chlorothalonil, and recall that there is a 9.5 oz, 19.1 and 26.8 oz chlorothalonil per 1,000 sq ft yearly limit for roughs& fairways, tees, and greens, respectively.

Damn it's Cold on the West Coast
Although we're still a few weeks away from the official start of winter, it's been pretty damn cold in the West. Seattle got snow last week and Portland was pretty much frozen last Tuesday and Wednesday. Temps in the 50s-60s are present in much of the Golden State with below freezing night time temps being seen in the Central Valley.

Pink snow mold is likely to be coming in these cold wet conditions and so is freeze and winter damage.

Other than that, I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving holiday! I'll see some of you in Portland this Thursday at the Oregon Pesticide Seminar.

Until then, signing off from the Right Coast....

Trinity and Triton

Trinity,Triton, & Turkey

By Megan Kennelly, on November 26th, 2010

Hello,

I hope you all had a lovely holiday with your families and/or friends. Having met the extended Wong family, and seeing their passion for food, my guess is that Frank et al are all still in a food coma today.

Trinity and Triton are two of the newer DMI products in turf. Frank did a nice job summarizing these materials recently and you can check it out here:

http://turfdiseases.blogspot.com/2010/06/get-yer-t-ts-out-and-use-them-for.html

Since I don’t think I could put the “review” any better than Frank did, I’ll let you read his description above. So, I’ll skip right to some of my own experiences. I’ve had a few trials with these products and I’ll mention a couple of them here:

2009, Triton Flo

The study was conducted in ‘A4’ creeping bentgrass. Applications were made at 14-day intervals beginning 28 May with the final application on 20 August. Fungicides were applied with a CO2-powered boom sprayer equipped with two XR Tee Jet 8004VS nozzles at 30 psi in water equivalent to 2.0 gal/1000 ft2. Plots were 4 ft × 10 ft and there were four replications of each treatment. Plots were rated by visually estimating the percentage of each plot affected by dollar spot or brown patch symptoms.

Dollar spot was present on several rating dates. All materials reduced dollar spot to zero except for a trace amount in the Reserve 2.8 fl oz treatment on 17 Jul and 12 Aug. Brown patch symptoms were visible on only one rating date, 17 July, at low levels, and all fungicides reduced disease to zero.

The results are summarized here, and you can click to enlarge:

2009, Trinity:

This study was conducted in a stand of Cato-Crenshaw. Disease became quite severe in the untreated. The photo below shows treated plots surrounded by untreated, and the graph shows disease progression in the untreated. All treatments reduced disease to zero on all dates:

Name	Rate (oz/1000)	Interval
Insignia + Trinity	0.5 + 0.1	14 days
Emerald	0.13	14 days
Emerald	0.18	21 days
Honor	0.83	14 days
Honor	1.1	21 days

Triton Flo, 2010

Triton Flo was part of a fungicide program study in 2010. You can check my post from 2 weeks ago.


Last note: potential phyto on bermudagrass

OH, don't forget, as I mentioned last week when discussing Reserve, triticonazole products can put the hurt on bermudagrass so read those labels and be cautious.
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Honor (boscalid + pyraclostrobin)

Honor is a relatively new fungicide from BASF that contains the active ingredients boscalid and pyraclostrobin. Boscalid is the active ingredient in the excellent dollar spot fungicide Emerald and pyraclostrobin is the active ingredient in Insignia. Like Insignia, Honor will also be marketed under the umbrella of Intrinsic brand fungicides from BASF. If you have not heard of this, it basically states that pyraclostrobin may provide some additional plant health benefits aside from disease control. If you recall, John posted a blurb about our meeting at Farmlinks in October where we shown all the data behind the Intrinsic label. Although the data is a bit sketchy, there does appear to be some benefit to the plant. Before I go any further remember that these are fungicides and should only be used for disease control!

Disease Control

Honor is an excellent fungicide for broad spectrum disease control because it takes advantage of the dollar spot activity of boscalid and the brown patch and anthracnose activity of pyraclostrobin. Other diseases listed on the label are gray leaf spot, fairy ring, take-all patch and pink snow mold just to name a few. Therefore it could fit into a fungicide program for tees and greens at almost anytime of the year. However, I think it fits best during July or August when brown patch and anthracnose are likely to develop in the Midwest. Below are a few graphs highlighting the strengths of Honor against dollar spot. If you want to see how Honor's efficacy against anthracnose and brown patch compares to other fungicides, click on the diseases and you will see reports from Dr. Bruce Clarke at Rutgers University.

Curatively Honor (boscalid in particular) is slow to reduce the dollar spot epidemic, but overtime provides the best suppression. Preventatively Honor controls dollar spot well, but only provides acceptable control at the 1.1 oz rate under the pressure we experienced this year.

Summary

Honor is an excellent product especially for dollar spot and brown patch. I think the best fit for this particular product is during mid summer when dollar spot is still active and brown patch and anthracnose are just starting to get going. Plus pyraclostrobin also has activity against Pythium blight under lower pressures. Essentially this product could almost fit anywhere in a fungicide program in the Midwest.