STRI validation of Greencast

Predicting when pathogens will attack turf is a learned art. Once you have been caught out and suffered the consequences of widespread angry patches of microdochium (fusarium) patch during a mild and wet autumn, you learn to 'feei' the right weather conditions as you walk out the door. I often state that we are experiencing 'good fusarium weather' and everyone knows what I mean.

Added to this, the application time for most fungicides to achieve good disease control can be crucial, especially with the newer fungicides that have come onto the amenity market in the last couple of years. Strobilurins (e.g. azoxystrabin) and DMls (e.g. Myclobutanil) should be applied before Microdochiumnivale has extensively colonised the grass plant to provide the best control.

In reality, this means applying them before the first sign of disease. In the case of golf, an 'indicator' green can be a good way of establishing when to treat all of the other greens as it will develop disease first. As soon as disease is observed on the indicator green, all other greens should be treated. However, if you do not have an indicator green or if you want to keep all greens clean from microdochium patch, without having to use an expensive and environmentally unsound prophylactic fungicidal programme, could disease occurrence be reliably predicted?

Syngenta Crop Protection has developed an online decision support tool called Greencast that is commonly used in the USA to try to reduce prophylactic use of fungicides and encourage application only when occurrence of the disease is predicted. This system uses forecasted weather to determine the likelihood of certain diseases occurring.....

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