 |
Presented in partnership YOUR TURF
|
 |
Megan Kennelly of Kansas State University is shown wearing the appropriate gear for pesticide application. Illustration by J. Machnicki. |
Turfing the ’Net
Solid information about golf course management is available on the Internet, and two new sites are up and running to help superintendents manage turf disease and annual bluegrass weevil.
John Kaminski, an assistant professor of turfgrass science at Penn State University, admits that his inspiration for a turfgrass blog came from a YouTube site where a different person posts every day of the week. Kaminski says, “I really wanted to do that for turf, but I realized that making and editing a video every day of the week would just be too much.” Instead, he decided to start a blog and gathered together five young turfgrass plant pathologists from universities in five different areas of the country, so that a different person could post every day of the week about a different region.
 |
Annual bluegrass weevil larvae can cause significant turf damage. Photo by S. McDonald. |
Kaminski covers the northeastern region, while Megan Kennelly, an assistant professor of plant pathology at Kansas State University, reports on the south-central region. Lane Tredway, an associate professor and Extension specialist in the department of plant pathology at North Carolina State University, takes care of the Southeast, and Jim Kerns, an assistant professor of turfgrass pathology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is responsible for the Midwest. The West is covered by Frank Wong, an associate professor of turfgrass pathology at the University of California at Riverside.
As disease pressure increases, the turfgrass disease blog (http://turfdiseases.blogspot.com) will highlight diseases that are being seen in each region and provide tips about control and management. Twitter users (http://twitter.com/turfdiseases) can follow the blog and receive updates about new posts. Over time, Kaminski hopes to improve the blog by providing disease photos from the field and occasionally bringing in guest bloggers.
Another new site (www.weeviltrak.com) helps superintendents by tracking the life cycle stages of the annual bluegrass weevil in different areas of the U.S. and providing information about timing of pesticide applications. Sponsored by DuPont, the site not only tracks the appearance of annual bluegrass weevils in different locations but also gives advice about the best application times for the DuPont products Acelepryn and Provaunt.
 |
Patches of zoysiagrass infected by Curvularia may coalesce. |
Eleven university and industry researchers provide information about the weevil at sites from Maine south to Virginia and as far west as western Pennsylvania, West Virginia and the New York state-Canadian border. The researchers include: Steve Alm, University of Rhode Island; Rod Ferrentino, Ferrentino & Co. Inc.; Paul Heller, Penn State University; Albrecht Koppenhofer, Rutgers University; Dan Peck, Cornell University; Steve McDonald, Turfgrass Disease Solutions; Stan Swier, University of New Hampshire; Pat Vittum, University of Massachusetts-Amherst; Chris Williamson, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Rod Youngman, Virginia Tech; and Chuck Silcox, DuPont Professional Products.
A recently released series of informative publications from Agrotain International shed some light on the international urea fertilizer market. Asia produces 60 percent of the world’s supply of urea fertilizer, while other producers include the U.S., the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Central Asia. South Asia, Latin America and the U.S. are the largest importers of urea, and the U.S. consumes 11 percent of the total global supply. Since 1999, 26 ammonia plants in the U.S. have closed and others remain idle because of high natural gas prices, resulting in a decline in national production while fertilizer consumption increases. The company says the demand for urea should remain high as the world population increases and people look more to improve their diets. |
