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u FEATURE u DR. SARA STRICKER, COMMUNICATIONS & OUTREACH COORDINATOR,
GUELPH TURFGRASS INSTITUTE
The 2024
Turfgrass
The Ontario Turfgrass Symposium (OTS) is an annual
educational event at the University of Guelph that
caters to all segments of Canada’s turfgrass industry.
The 2024 Symposium included a new initiative
to create a concise summary document that distills
the in-person presentations into approximately 500
words, enabling more effective knowledge transfer.
Supported by the Ontario Agri-Food Innovation
Alliance KTT Funding Program: Getting Science Off
the Shelf, this effort aims to broaden access to critical
insights—especially for those who couldn’t attend in
person. Below, you’ll find summaries of three key
presentations, with the full document available at
www.TurfSymposium.ca.
THE ART OF APPLICATION AND TURF PESTS IN
2022/2023 by Matt Legg
There are multiple of aspects of fungicide application
in turf management, all of which should be understood
to ensure that a product is as effective as possible.
These aspects include the fundamentals of how a
product works, the importance of formulation, the
intricacies of tank mixing, and various tips for practical
applications, together providing a comprehensive
guide for optimizing turf pest management strategies.
How Fungicides Work
Fungicide fundamentals include whether the product
is fungicidal (killing the pathogen) or merely
fungistatic (inhibiting its growth), where the product
works, how long it lasts, and how it moves through
the plant. Newer active ingredients (AI) are applied at
very low rates when compared with older
technologies. For example, when applying a product
to a 6000 square-foot green, the volume of AI applied
on that green would be the equivalent of a golf ball!
As such, it is important to understand how your
product works to ensure that you are maximizing
effectiveness following application with minimal losses.
Ontario Turfgrass Symposium: Presenter Matt Legg
One of the more fundamental concepts surrounding
fungicide technology is that of formulation, or the product’s
“vehicle” to safely deliver the AI to a particular pest or
pathogen. The development process for these formulations
is a costly and lengthy endeavor, often taking 8-10 years and
costing upwards of $300 million, culminating in a rigorous
selection process that narrows down thousands of potential
compounds to the final, marketable product.
Formulation of a product affects its distribution across
the application area, the timing of absorption, the product’s
ability to be absorbed by the plant and the target pest, and
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• CGSA • GreenMaster