The announcement of the new variety, “Flagstick,” comes after twenty years of research by turf experts at the university to help combat the insidious foliar disease, which is responsible for more chemical spending worldwide than any other turfgrass malady.
A twenty-year search by researchers at Michigan State University (MSU) for a turfgrass resistant to “dollar spot,” the most common disease afflicting golf courses in Michigan and throughout the northeastern United States has finished on an upswing, the university announced on its MSUToday.msu.edu website. A team of MSU turf experts has released a new cultivar called “Flagstick,” which has shown resistance to dollar spot in long-term field trials conducted at MSU and at several other locations across the country, the university said.
Dollar spot is a foliar disease named after the silver-dollar-shaped patches of dead grass and silvery film left in its path. Caused by a fungal pathogen, the disease is a top concern for golf course managers in northern areas who rely on creeping bentgrass and annual bluegrass for putting greens and fairways.
According to the American Phytopathological Society, more money is spent worldwide on the chemical control of dollar spot than on any other turfgrass disease, the university reported
Joseph Vargas, an MSU plant, soil and microbial sciences professor who was the lead researcher in developing Flagstick, said the new turfgrass cultivar can provide a tool to control dollar spot, lower disease management costs and reduce the environmental impact of fungicides.
“Last year in Michigan, if it was not for dollar spot, very few fungicide applications would have been applied to golf courses,” Vargas said. “Golf courses usually spend about 40 to 50 percent of their fungicide budgets on controlling dollar spot. It’s a disease that can’t be tolerated because, if you let it go, it will spread and eventually destroy your turf.”
The new cultivar is being embraced by the golf course industry, said Gordon LaFontaine, Executive Director of the Michigan Turfgrass Foundation.
“Flagstick is a tremendous new turfgrass,” LaFontaine said. “The industry spends so much on spraying for dollar spot on golf courses. This cultivar will make a world of difference. Having a dollar-spot-resistant cultivar on golf course greens, tees and especially fairways—encompassing acres of turf—will likely result in financial savings to golf courses as well as reduced environmental impact from fewer fungicide applications.”
The cultivar development began about 20 years ago when Ron Detweiler, a technician in Vargas’s lab, noticed patches of grass devoid of dollar spot at the MSU Hancock Turfgrass Research Center, the university reported. Using grants from the Michigan Turfgrass Foundation and Project GREEEN (Generating Research and Extension to meet Economic and Environmental Needs), Vargas and his colleagues sampled the grasses and established small plots of them at the research center. After 12 years of trials, Flagstick emerged as the first highly resistant turfgrass cultivar, the university reported.
“Most of the best discoveries are made through observation,” Vargas said. “The best place to look for disease resistance is in the middle of a big outbreak. Developing a dollar-spot-resistant cultivar has been a major research focus at a number of universities for the past 20 years. The fact that we at MSU were able to come up with it is very fulfilling.”
Pickseed USA, which partnered with MSU for this research, has produced 4,000 pounds of Flagstick for the 2015 season, with larger quantities expected to be available for distribution in 2016, the university announced. The work of Vargas and his team is also being funded in part by MSU AgBioResearch.
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