Bent Grass greens and bacteria

[Greg Holland]

A course in my area is currently struggling with bacteria on its bent grass greens.  A very well known course in this area had bacteria problems last year. 

Excerpts from email members got are the following:
recent tests have identified a bacteria that is killing our bentgrass greens.  These tests were confirmed in an independent test performed by a University's research center.
 
This bacteria is new and there is no known way of treating it. 
Here's what we know about the bacteria:

*         This strand is new but they are seeing bacteria show up in bentgrass greens more and more often.
*         The bacteria will never go away, but if a treatment is found, they are optimistic the bacteria can be managed much like many other turf problems.
*         When asked if playing on the greens would reduce our chances of recovery, he suggested that play may accelerate the spread of the bacteria and damage the delicate turf.  He recommend we stay off the greens until we see signs of improvement.

So, what causes this problem? 
If a person plays the diseased greens, then plays elsewhere, can he spread it via his spikes?
Should other courses in the area be concerned about spread of this bacteria in other manners?

Any insights?

[BCrosby]

Where is the course located?

[Tom_Doak]

Bacteria?

Twenty years ago, there was a bentgrass variety called Toronto or C-15, which had been used on many courses in the 1960's and 1970's.  All of a sudden, in the mid-1980's, it just started puking and dying, and the researchers had no idea why.  They called the problem "bacterial wilt", but I don't know if they ever really identified a pathogen or not, and the problem was limited to that one cultivar of bentgrass.  So, eventually, all of the courses affected re-grassed their greens with newer varieties.

That episode is the reason some of us are reluctant to use new cultivars of grass for our greens ... many of them haven't been in existence very long, and who knows when another such problem will arise in a new grass after a few years' time?

[Anthony_Nysse]

Its the same thing that was on the Toronto bents of the past. They havenot really foundmuch on Penncross and for a while, researchers thought the newer bents were resistant of it. It's starting to pop up more and more and was the causeof a lot of decline last summer.

[Steve Okula]

I found this report published the American Phytopathological Society, dated July, 2010. The authors, several well-known argonomists from Micigan State, (Vargas, et al) describe a bacterial infection of G-2 variety bentgrass in North Carolina.

http://apsjournals.apsnet.org/doi/abs/10.1094/PDIS-94-7-0922B

Greg, where are you and do you know what varieties of bent are being affected?

[Kris Spence]

Greg, I looked at the greens you are talking about on Saturday.  The pattern of decline is very unusual especially for this time of year.  All 18 greens and the putting greens are infected or affected by whatever the causal agent it is.  The super indicated that two different labs positively identified high levels of bacteria in the samples.  

One thing I noticed is the lower portions or drainage discharge points were not as severely affected as the centers or higher areas of the greens which I found unusual.  Typically, your trouble on bent is associated with excess moisture in the root zone but this doesn't appear to be the case.

The grass did not appear to be completely dead, the crowns and lower portions of the leaf blades were still green, the root system appeared ok.  The degree of damage varies from one segregation of the L-93 to another, some unaffected others devastated?

As far as spreading to other courses, the greens are L-93 bentgrass and depending on whether the organism causing the problem is specific to that variety will determine it going to nearby courses.  Most of the surrounding courses are one of the A varieties, Cato, Crenshaw or Penncross.

[Greg Holland]

Thanks for the article Steve, and the posts guys.

Course is in NC, and as noted a highly regarded course about an hour and a half away had similar problems last year but they were able to treat it.  However, the bacteria identified this summer is a different bacteria than that one last year.

Kris, thanks for the report.    Do you know if the problems they had last year were caused by disease, bacterial wilt, or just the awful heat we dealt with last summer?  Heard at least one course in the area is requiring golfers to have a shoe bath in clorox before playing a round.

A super I talked to indicated that the move away from mercury based fungicides, as required by EPA, maybe the reason some of these new issues are arising.