Roundup Ready Bentgrass

[Bill Overdorf]

What say you to the development of a new Roundup-Ready bentgrass? Considering the never ending battle with poa, could this possibly contribute to its control?

[Crabby Grass]

Like a lot of things, this one has been kicked around for a long while. I find it hard to believe that whatever it is they end up with will actually still be "Round Up".

Watch out for that there bluegrass rough.

[Don_Mahaffey]

Bill, In some of the trials, poa strains showed resistance to round up. In other words, don't underestimate the most adaptable grass of all time. I doubt round up ready bent will end the poa war.

[Mike Benham]

Even if the Roundup will starve off the poa and leave the bent, the superintendent will still be faced with patching the turf where the poa has been eradicated.

Migration of the poa back into the green complex will still be a challenge.  Does the Roundup act like a "pre-emergent" herbicide and not allow the poa to germinate? (I don't think so).

I agree with Don that poa is a formible foe (or maybe friend) ...

[TEPaul]

Isn't it basically true that you can get rid of poa but you just can't get rid of it forever?

I know very little about the details of agronomy but I sense that with greens the expectation is to regrass, fight the reappearance of poa as long as you can on the regrassed greens, but eventually poa will come back and then somewhere down the line you just have to regrass again. Would this type of "cycle thinking" be about the only way you can really deal with poa?

There was quite a bit of anthracnose outbreak in my region and I believe our super was about as good as anyone I've ever heard of at clever ways to fight it. But we got into a restoration of our course, including expanding our greens back to their original sizes and configurations. Regrassing had not been planned in our restoration plan but our super convinced us to add the regrassing step onto the master plan as basically as insurance against further outbreaks of anthracnose for the next number of years.

He basically said we can keep rolling the dice year after year with our old greens (all kinds of strains including lots of poa) or we can just bite the bullet, regrass them and buy time--at least maybe 5+ years and try to keep the poa out as long as possible.

We had fine old green surfaces but I'm glad now we took his advice.

[Mike Benham]

TEPaul,

I believe that is correct.  There are number of pre-emergent herbicides that can be used to help control poa anna (such as Progress - http://www.regalchem.com/prdhrb3.html ) but the key word is CONTROL not eliminate or eradicate ...

[TEPaul]

It should also be added that the danger on poa greens of the ever-present prospect of anthracnose outbreak is directly related to stressing the green surfaces with higher speeds.

In a way it almost seems to have an analogy to AIDS and free love. Free love can sure lead to increasingly rolling the dice with Aids just like increasing green speeds (stress) can sure lead to increasing the risk of anthranose. At some point you have to be careful and start to understand you just can't have everything all the time without increased risk! Sort of  poetic justice to it all actually!

[Health Director-Africa]

Uh, well, I'll tell you want Mr. Paul. Rather than dismiss your comments outright, I will have a committee examine them in the unlikely event they actually help anthing or anyone. In the meantime, please be so kind as to clean your spikes before entering our continent, so as to avoid infecting our greens with poa seeds. Thanks and have a nice day.

[TEPaul]

Dear Health Director--Africa:

Would I be wrong to assume you must be a pretty busy guy?

Don't worry about a thing from me though--I'm definitely not gonna be entering your continent, spikes or no spikes--ever! You have a nice day over there yourself if that's possible with cats like you!

[Michael Stachowicz]

The problem with roundup ready bent is if it is grown in a shady, compacted, poorly drained area it will be thin, like any bentgrass.  Anybody who thinks they are going to have pure bent stand in areas without sun, the proper drainage, and heavy traffic are wrong.  Instead of a bent/poa mix, they will have a bent/dirt mix.  Where there is sun etc, new agressive bents will fill in and be dense and out-compete poa.  

Roundup ready is a marketing ploy trying to simplify a complicated problem.  We have chemicals against poa already, we just don't use them because of the devastation they would cause in a green that was just 25% poa nevermind 75%.

Give a trained superintendent a chainsaw, Prograss, bensulide, and allow him to regrass with G-2 and the results will be much better.  

I have also heard that the roundup ready bent is a ugly grass just a tad better than penncross.