Disease and Mite Seminar 2016

In November ourselves and K&B Adams had the pleasure of presenting two of the top turf minds in Australia. Dr Percy Wong and Professor Peter McMaugh in Adelaide.

The day started off with a supers forum with Percy where new diseases that have been identified were discussed. A number of these had been seen in South Australia and are a concern that not much is known about them and research fund are needed to learn more as well as come up with plans to combat them. Percy also spoke about the need for accurate diagnosis. Just because it has certain symptoms its doesn’t mean that that disease is present and a good disease turf testing lab can help here.

I went on and spoke about a new fungicide we have coming in March next year. This is a brand new active ingredient with a broad range of disease control including dollar spot, anthracnose,algae and helmo and grey leaf spot.. More information to follow in the new year.

As well Monstar update is for full registration February 2017

Afterwards Peter spoke about mites and the work he has done and the work he is doing in correct identification of the mite as there are number of mites out there which effect different grasses. Alot of research has been done by Peter and counterpart Don Loch but plenty of work needs to be done and research dollars are needed.

I’d like to thank the following of helping with the day. Without associations and passionate individuals we would not be able to put these  pure education days:

• SAGCSA

• K&B Adams (Sam Sherriff) in partnering with us to put this on and make it all possible

• Turfwise Consulting

All notes have been sent out to the delegates.

The day has been nicely summed up form Ivan Swinstead from Tea Tree Gully Golf club

“ Listening to Dr. Percy Wong and Peter McMaugh, two of our industries leading experts, talk about fungal diseases and Couch Mite in turf, demonstrated to me the issues that we can potentially face in maintaining Couch playing surfaces at our facility. Having Wintergreen Couch fairways at our club for twenty plus years now, Couch Mite and fungal disease are problems that our club has to deal with each year. It was interesting in hearing the options for control in both areas.”