Seminar on integrated disease management of turfgrass

A very successful three days of seminars, sponsored by Dow AgroSciences Ltd and organised by Rigby Taylor Ltd, were held recently at venues around England.

The road show which included free refreshments and lunch for participating delegates took in the following venues, Chobham Golf Club, Surrey, Leicester City Football Club and Huddersfield Golf Club.

The keynote speaker was Dr Kate Entwhistle, Turfgrass Plant Pathologist Consultant, The Turf Disease Centre, who explained the principles and practices of integrated disease management. Within the presentation Dr Kate Entwhistle talked about management practices influencing disease incidence and severity, cultural, biological and chemical methodology, the safe and effective practice for fungicide application, disease forecasting and sustainability of currently available procedures.

John Holt, Product Development Director, Rigby Taylor, took two golf course case studies in different parts of the UK and discussed how they had both successfully reduced their annual nitrogen applications down to 70 kg's/ha.

Steve Denton, Grass Seed Development Manager, Rigby Taylor discussed grass seed development for sports turf and future trends. Within his presentation Steve talked about how forecasting is important to breeders to make sure that future generations of seed are going to be right for the end user.

Finally our own David Saltman of Pitchcare talked about the management of moisture content of turfgrass. This included the use of Dryject system to inject Profile directly into the ground to help retain moisture and nutrients. Keeping plants healthy has a significant effect on incidence of turfgrass diseases.

Each day was rounded off with a question and answer session. A full technical article of Dr Kate Entwhistle's presentation will be published in the October/November edition of Pitchcare.