Golf course managers have much more insight into which fungicides to use to suppress turfgrass diseases, such as the common and costly dollar spot disease, without damaging the grass on their fairways, thanks to a new study by researchers at Penn State.
The team evaluated variation in turfgrass injury caused by nine commercially available demethylation inhibitor (DMI) fungicides - a class of fungicide widely used in turfgrass management - commonly used to suppress dollar spot and other major turfgrass diseases when applied to annual bluegrass and creeping bentgrass fairways. In Pennsylvania and much of the Northeast, golf course fairways often are a mix of creeping bentgrass and annual bluegrass.
In findings published online ahead of inclusion in a printed edition of International Turfgrass Society Research Journal, the researchers reported that two of the fungicides, metconazole and triticonazole, result in injury to annual bluegrass but not creeping bentgrass. And another fungicide, mefentrifluconazole, resulted in the lowest injury on both annual bluegrass and creeping bentgrass.
This research was driven by the need to better understand the turf safety of both older and newer DMI fungicides that are commonly used on golf courses, according to John Kaminski, professor of turfgrass science in the College of Agricultural Sciences and senior author on the study.
