cc  >> Nadia Dominguez: Welcome to  Wednesday Nite at the Lab at the  UW-Madison Biotechnology Center.  Tonight, we welcome  Dr. Jim Kerns of the Department  of Plant Pathology.  Jim is a native Midwesterner,  he received his BS from North  Carolina State University in  agronomy, an MS from Texas A&M  in soil and crop science, and a  PhD from North Carolina State  University in plant pathology.  He is an associate professor  here at the UW and an Extension  specialist in the Department  of Plant Path.  He has many statewide  responsibilities, for instance,  he heads out to sod farms and  golf courses across the state,  as well as athletic fields  including Lambeau Field and  Miller Park to assess needs and  problems of the turfgrass there.  He participates in many training  programs for turfgrass  professions and is the lead  trainer for pesticide applicator  training for the turfgrass  industry.  And in his free time, he enjoys  hiking and spending time with  his wife and his greyhound,  Dash, and this will come as a  big surprise to you all, he also  really enjoys playing golf.  So please join me in welcoming  Dr. Jim Kerns to Wednesday Nite  at the Lab.  [APPLAUSE]  >> Jim Kerns: Thank you,  very much, Nadia.  It's a real pleasure to be here. 

 I know when the email came  across I was really surprised  because I tend to be the  atypical researcher probably  here at UW-Madison for at least  a lot of the people I've looked  at.  I don't do a whole lot of real  fancy things.  I don't work a lot with DNA,  I don't do, what would you say,  life saving research, by any  means.  So it was a real pleasure to  come and talk to you because I  am really passionate about what  I do.  Like Nadia said, I have  statewide responsibilities in  turf and, in particular,  turf diseases.  So anytime turf is dying or  anything like that, I usually  get called in.  So as she said, I'm an assistant  professor and Extension  specialist.  And I just wanted to get a feel  for how many people know what  Extension is?  Have you heard of Extension?  So people have heard of  Extension.  So primarily my job is to help  out the turf managers of the  state of Wisconsin.  That includes golf courses,  athletic fields and then how  many people have a home lawn?  So I help out all of you. 

 I visit home lawns, I talk with  homeowners quite a bit on the  phone.  So that's primarily my job  responsibilities.  So I came up with somewhat of a  clever title, I guess, Weapons  of Grass Destruction.  I thought it was a clever thing.  Essentially, what I told Nadia  is anytime turf starts to die I  get called in.  Whether it's from a disease,  which we'll talk about, or  something else.  Most of the time it's usually  somebody messes up and then I  have to come in and help them.  I am in the discipline of plant  pathology, is where I got my  PhD.  And plant pathology is the study  of plant diseases and plant  pathogens.  So I always like to start with  what a disease is, and I  remember when I got the email  up front to try to limit  complicated terms. 

 So I apologize up front for the  definition.  It's the only definition that we  really use for diseases in plant  path.  And that's the change in  structure or function of a host,  in our case a plant, caused by  the continuous irritation of a  biotic agent that results in the  production of symptoms.  And that will become more clear  in a little bit when I show you  some pictures of what I'm  talking about.  So the first picture I always  like to show, is anybody of  Irish descent?  Okay, we've got a few people.  Do you know when your families  came to the United States?  >> Around the famine.  >> Around the famine, very good.  So that's what I always like to  bring in that that's where human  interaction with plant pathology  is.  Over a million and a half Irish  people immigrated to the US in  the 1840s because of the potato  famine which is caused by a  fungus, well, now it's  considered a fungal-like  organism, but a fungus for all  intents and purposes.  And it did this to the potato  plants. 

 So it's a very, very devastating  disease.  I don't know if you were  listening to a lot of the news  but we actually had this disease  in Wisconsin last year for the  first time in I think about  eight years.  So it was big, big topic for us.  In Wisconsin this is what it is  was on.  I don't know how many people  lost their tomatoes last summer?  A few people.  This is what the symptoms look  like on the fruit.  So this is what I mean by a  change in structure of function.  Something is going wrong with  this particular tomato fruit.  That's not a typical tomato  fruit, it looks pretty nasty.  And this particular fungus gets  in the fleshy fruit and,  basically, just eats it and rots  it away. 

 That's what it did to the plant  tissue.  And then more importantly, what  I'm more passionate about, I  know everybody loves tomatoes,  and I love them too, but with  turf, this is a particular  disease on a golf course  fairway.  Very rapid decline.  And I'm going to try to give you  some evidence of why turf is so  important as we go through the  talk.  But in this particular instance,  this poor superintendent had to  end up spending about $10,000 to  keep this in line through the  summer because we didn't have a  very good handle on what it was.  Here's one if you do have a home  lawn you might have seen this  one.  If you've ever been out in  August or September and you come  back inside and your shoes are  orange.  Have you ever seen that when  you're mowing the lawn?  This is one of our most common  calls that we get from  homeowners.  This is called rust.  This particular pathogen causes  problems on wheat, sorghum,  oats, barley, you name it, this  occurs on it. 

 So this is one that we see a lot  in turf.  It doesn't really excite me  because it doesn't do a whole  lot of damage, but homeowners  sure don't like to have their  shoes turn orange.  I've never understood that part.  You can see it's definitely a  change in the structure or  function of the plant.  There's something going on that  almost anybody can tell that  something is wrong with that  particular leaf plate.  The one component that we always  talk about in plant pathology is  what we call the disease  triangle.  This is our fundamental  principle.  Our students hate this because  we go back to it over and over  and over again.  And the reason why we like to  use it is you need all three of  these things up on this slide to  come together at a certain point  in time for a disease to occur  in a plant.  So you need a susceptible host,  you need a plant there that can  have the disease develop in, you  need the pathogen there so it  needs to be present or, in many  cases, some of our pathogens  actually blow in from Mexico or  southern US, and then we need  the right environment. 

 So the classic example that I've  always liked so use is last  summer.  It was just a beautiful summer,  as far as it wasn't hot at all.  I was kind of not busy all  summer because we typically need  heat for these things to  develop.  So all three of these need to  come together at a certain point  in time for a disease to  develop.  If one of these is absent,  disease cannot develop in  plants.  And I liked to bring that up and  always stress that because it's  a very, very complicated system.  And plant pathologists not only  have to know microbes, so we  have to know fungi, bacteria,  viruses, nematodes, but we also  have to know our plants.  So one of my colleagues, the  poor guy has to work on  ornamentals so he has to know  over 200 different species.  Fortunately for me I only need  to know about 16 and only seven  of those we grow in the state of  Wisconsin so that's even better.  So I already mentioned some of  our plant pathogens. 

 The common things we work on are  fungi, nematodes, bacteria,  things called molecutes, and  viruses.  And primarily what I work on are  fungi.  Of all the turf diseases about  99% of them are caused by some  sort of fungal agent.  So unlike Nadia, I don't know  bacteria very well other than  courses I've had.  I've done some work with them.  Viruses, I wouldn't have a clue.  And I know you've had some  people talk to you, I'm sure,  about viruses.  I wouldn't have a clue where to  start if I had to work on a  virus.  Nematodes, I do know something  about nematodes because in turf  they can be quite problematic.  Throughout the Midwest, as a  matter of fact, nematodes are  very problematic in field crops  and other things. 

 And then molecutes are kind of  this really cool class of  pathogens.  They're kind of in between a  bacteria and a virus.  They're really kind of a strange  thing, and they cause some  pretty unique symptoms.  So getting to my job.  And I just like to put this up  here, I don't know if other  speakers do this, but I like to  familiarize people with what I  do.  So I'm in plant pathology,  that's my discipline, but I  specialize in turfgrass  pathology, so diseases of turf.  I have a 70% Extension  appointment so my primary  responsibility at the university  is Extension.  I have a 30% research  appointment so I don't really  teach even though I taught last  fall.  So some of the things I do with  Extension are pesticide  applicator training is one of my  biggest programs.  I'm actually responsible for  training all of the turf  managers in the state that get a  license to apply a pesticide. 

 So to be able to, outside of  your home lawn because that's  your own property, if you do it  on somebody else's property or  you do it for a price or you're  contracting that out, you have  to be licensed within the state  of Wisconsin to do that.  So I provide the training for  people to get licensed.  We do about 700 to 800 people a  year in that program.  So it's a very big program.  Very nice money maker for the  college.  I do a lot of grower meetings.  The golf course industry,  athletic field industry and even  homeowners are very demanding  about their turf.  I don't know if people in the  audience expect excellent  turfgrass but a lot of people in  the state of Wisconsin do.  So last year I gave 48 talks  across the state of Wisconsin.  So I go around doing a lot of  education on how we manage  diseases, how you diagnose a  disease and basic how do you  manage turfgrass. 

 We do a bunch of Extension  publications.  I had Nadia pass one out, the  lawn maintenance calendar.  Anybody familiar, have you gone  to the UW Extension Web site and  looked at publications?  A couple people out there.  So if you haven't gone there, I  would encourage you to go there,  especially if you're home  gardeners or if you're  interested in lawn care, there  are probably over 300 to 400  articles on that Web site that  you can download for free.  And this particular one you can  download for free, print it off  at your computer and you have a  guide to maintaining your lawn.  They have these things for  tomatoes, anything you can  imagine.  So I wanted to, of course, plug  UW Extension since that's  basically who I work for.  And then the Turfgrass  Diagnostic Lab is another huge  component of my program.  I'm primarily responsible for a  lab to diagnose turfgrass  problems.  So this is where I interact a  lot with homeowners, golf  courses, sod farms, they send in  a sample and, for a fee, we  provide them with a diagnosis. 

 So for commercial growers, like  sod growers, athletic fields,  golf courses, they've got a lot  of money, we charge them about a  hundred bucks a sample.  For homeowners, we only charge  $20.  And we do get a lot of samples  in there.  And what we do is we identify  weeds, we identify the grass  species for people, we identify  diseases, insects, whatever  problems you might have.  And it's a pretty active part of  my job.  Last year we did about 470  samples.  And I'll show you a Web site and  everything that we have and if  you want I have cards and things  towards the end if you're  interested in using the service.  And I encourage you to use it, I  think it's an under-utilized  service in the state of  Wisconsin.  Many people probably don't know  that the university provides  that service, and I think it's  very, very helpful.  So just some examples of things  that I do during the year. 

 This is it what we called a snow  mold field day.  You're going to learn more about  snow mold in a little bit.  It's really one of the few  places in the country where we  can work on a disease called  snow mold, and if you look  outside you can figure out why.  Even though this year I'd rather  be in maybe Maryland or  Pennsylvania.  Those poor people are just  getting hammered.  I had, at this particular event,  about 75 golf course  superintendents and chemical  reps where we put out  demonstration trials to show  them how different fungicides  work for the control of this  particular disease.  So this is basically day-to-day  operations for me.  I give talks quite a bit.  Here is our summer field day.  We do this every summer where we  have more trials out at our  research farm which is out in  Verona out on county highway M. 

 Anybody been past the OJ Noir?  If you're heading south into  Verona, it's right there on the  right-hand side before you get  to U Ridge.  Very nice facility and I'd also  encourage you if you ever just  want to stop in, stop in.  We have demonstration plots of  different grasses out there.  If you're having a problem,  somebody's always there to be  able to help you.  That's our job there at that  research station.  So in this particular case, we  had about 300 to 350 people show  up, and we go over things like  what herbicides work for certain  weeds, what fungicides work for  certain diseases, what research  are we doing.  So some of the things I'm going  to present to you tonight, we  talk about at this particular  field day.  So here is the actual lab that's  housed at the OJ Noir.  This is the Turfgrass Diagnostic  Lab's Web site.  The Web site is down here  at the bottom. 

 www.plantpath.wisc.edu/tdl/  This is where we have all our  information about sample  submission, what we actually do  with the sample.  The nice thing, I think, about  the service is we do a 24-hour  turn around.  So if is sample comes in, within  24 hours we'll get you an answer  back.  So I hope this isn't sounding  too commercial, but this is a  really huge part of my program  and that's why I wanted to talk  to you about it tonight.  So before I go any farther into  the actual research, I wanted to  show you a few things that I  brought along.  And I'm going to have Nadia pass  them around in a little bit.  But I brought some common  turfgrasses that are grown in  the state of Wisconsin.  And I'm going to be talking a  lot about these so I wanted you  to get an idea of what they look  like.  So this particular one here, and  the tags are in all but one of  them, it fell out on the way  over here.  This particular one is creeping  bentgrass. 

 So anybody play golf in the  audience?  Okay, this is the putting green  grass that you play on.  And usually fairways.  It's over grown a little bit,  you probably wouldn't want to  hit a golf ball out of this  right now.  But the neat thing about it, I  wanted you to get a feel for  actually the difference between  all of these.  Some things we hear sometimes is  grass is grass, right?  Well, these are four different  species that I have here.  So this particular one, the  characteristic is it's very  fine-bladed.  And I always say to identify it,  this is likely in your home lawn  near your gutters where a lot of  water is.  If you see something really  puffy, if you go out and feel  it, it's really soft.  That's probably creeping  bentgrass.  This particular one here, little  bit longer. 

 This is the number one home lawn  grass in the state of Wisconsin.  This is Kentucky bluegrass.  This is what's likely in most  people's lawns in Madison,  Milwaukee, Green Bay unless  they've gone with something new  recently.  This one has a very glossy  blade, and if there's a leaf tip  on here, it has what we call a  boat shape leaf tip.  So if you see towards the tip of  the leaf it will look like the  keel of a boat, that front part  of a boat.  So this is very common in your  lawns.  Very nice grass because it can  tolerate almost, well, it can  tolerate a lot.  It recovers very well from  damage so from kids and dogs and  other things.  That's primarily why we use it  in home lawns.  This is also the grass that's on  Miller Park. 

 I don't know if you watch  baseball, but Miller Park was US  renowned this year for how good  their field looked.  We had superintendents from all  over the US coming to look at  Miller Park this year because it  looked so good and they used a  very nice variety of Kentucky  bluegrass.  This one is tall fescue, and he  said in the back there that this  looked like the crap he mowed in  Florida.  And he's about right.  It's a very wide blade.  It has very big veins if you  look on the leaf.  And they run up and down so  they're parallel with each  other.  This might be in your yard, as  well.  In the back yard near a walnut  tree.  It grows well in the shade. 

 Kentucky bluegrass doesn't do  well next to walnuts,  does anybody know why?  [INAUDIBLE]  >> Yes, walnuts produce a  chemical that Kentucky bluegrass  doesn't like.  So this particular one can  survive underneath walnut trees.  It also does just better in the  shade.  This is one, I only brought this  for your own benefit because I  think this is what we're going  to see starting to take over  home lawns in the state of  Wisconsin because it's way more  drought tolerant than Kentucky  bluegrass.  So even though we're near the  Great Lakes, we have ample water  supply, I really do think that  we're going to have to be more  cognizant, especially in turf  because we can't eat it, about  how we use water.  So this might be one you see  more and more of.  And then this final one, I just  like to bring along, it's one of  my favorite grasses because it  looks like pine needles to me.  If you touch it, it feels like  pine needles.  It's real stiff, prickly.  It's called fine fescue. 

 So this is what is primarily on  golf courses in Scotland and  Ireland and the United Kingdom.  This is why they are so much  more, what would you call it,  sustainable many times than our  golf courses because this is  native to that particular area  of the world.  Very nice, it's fine textured  and I bring it for Wisconsin  because this does phenomenal in  the shade.  And the one thing I've learned  with homeowners and lawn care  providers is they're willing to  have the turf die but they're  not going to get rid of a tree.  So when I recommend prune the  tree, I get some pretty nasty  looks from people.  So if you don't want to prune a  tree, I recommend looking at  some of these more shade  tolerant grasses.  And that's actually in the lawn  maintenance guide I sent around.  So I wanted to get this in  everybody's hand and give you a  little bit about what turfgrass  is.  The reason why turfgrass we can  mow them everyday, every-other  day, every week, what have you,  is because the growing point of  the plant, I actually didn't put  that in here yet, the growing  point of the plant is at the  surface of the soil.  So down there near the lip of  that pot is where it grows from. 

 So that's why we can take it,  remove it and it grows back.  And turfgrass has evolved over  many years of grazing from  sheep, cattle, what have you, to  develop this strategy.  So that's why we use them in  that particular instance.  Now the problem with why I have  a job is no turfgrasses that we  grow in Wisconsin are native to  the United States.  They were all brought from other  areas of the world.  So it's thought that John Rolfe,  anybody know who John Rolfe is?  He's the one who married  Pocahontas.  They thought he's the guy who  brought Kentucky bluegrass to  the United States.  So all of these things are  brought in and that's important  because they came for the US,  they're not in their natural  environment so that makes them  even more prone for getting  insect and disease problems.  So it's one of the reasons why  we have a very strong turf team  in the state of Wisconsin, and  I'll give you some other reasons  here in a minute.  Are we natives of Wisconsin  here?  Some people?  All right so I'm going to quiz  you. 

 What are the four most important  commodities in the state of  Wisconsin?  >> Beer.  [LAUGHTER]  >> Beer, we got one of them.  >> Cheese.  >> Cheese.  >> Milk.  >> Milk.  >> Wood.  >> Wood.  Okay.  So we got the first two. 

 I know I'm from Chicago now so  you got to give me a break on  this one.  But I thought the number one  commodity in the state of  Wisconsin has to be  the Green Bay Packers.  I've just never seen towns  shut down on football Sunday.  Except for, I was just in New  Orleans on Sunday, you want to  talk about a town shutting down,  well, it wasn't shut down but  nobody was working.  Nothing was going on but  partying.  Beer, of course Miller being in  Milwaukee, very, very important  industry to the state of  Wisconsin.  We already mentioned cheese.  And the one I thought, I always  like to put in here is deer  hunting.  When we have meetings, we have  to schedule them around deer  hunting season because most golf  course superintendents are very  avid hunters.  So that's one of the reasons why  I put that in there. 

 So all kidding aside, some of  the most important commodities  in the state of Wisconsin when  we talk about agricultural  commodities.  Number one, and it probably  still is number one, is corn.  This was a survey done in 1999  so the data is a little bit  aged, but it's probably still  true.  Hay is very, very important in  the state of Wisconsin and so  are soy beans.  But the one interesting thing I  want to bring your attention to  is turfgrass.  It is actually fourth in acreage  to the state of Wisconsin.  And I'll show you where this  comes out.  So we beat things like oats,  barley, wheat, vegetables and  potatoes.  Potatoes is a huge commodity in  the state of Wisconsin, and the  potato growers are a very, very  big supporter of the College of  Ag and Life Science.  But turfgrass, as far as  acreage, beats that particular  crop out. 

 So here's an idea of where most  of the acreage is.  Most of the acreage is in home  lawns.  If you imagine we have about 5  million people in the state of  Wisconsin, I would venture to  say that about half of those or  a little less than half have a  lawn of some sort.  So about 63% of all of the  acreage in the state of  Wisconsin is home lawns.  Road sides is also a pretty big  thing, about 15% of it.  The interesting thing I think  that most people don't realize  is only 3.6% of the acreage  in Wisconsin for turf  is on golf courses.  Even though we have 460  golf courses in the state of  Wisconsin.  So we have a lot of courses in  the state.  So state of the turf industry.  It's very large in Wisconsin. 

 It's probably, per capita, one  of the largest in the country.  It's the largest segment of the  pesticide certification program.  So that program I mentioned in  the beginning that I run.  80% of the population now in the  state of Wisconsin is urban.  So it's primarily in Milwaukee,  Madison, Eau Claire and Green  Bay.  So very, very important.  And people are going to have  home lawns, there's going to be  athletic fields, golf courses,  all of those things are going to  have turf.  So what is its value?  That's what most people are  concerned about, right?  What does it do for the state?  Well, almost about every year at  least up until '99 people spent  $938 million on establishment of  turf in the state of Wisconsin.  So reestablishing home lawns,  new golf courses, athletic  fields, that's just really  anybody who goes out, what they  gathered this data from is seed  sales, fertilizers sales, all  these things to start up a new  lawn.  $2.7 billion in the state is  spent on turf equipment. 

 Lawn mowers, tractors, all of  these things to just maintain  turf was spent in 1999.  And Wisconsin still, I might  add, is home to many turfgrass  suppliers.  So we have a huge Toro  manufacturing plant in Tomah.  Briggs and Stratton is still  made in Wisconsin so I'm sure  you've seen that on lawn mower  engines.  And most of you probably know  Wisconsin was and still is a  very manufactured centered  state.  And a lot of it is centered in  turf.  We actually have one of the  largest fertilizer distributors  in the United States, Spring  Valley Fertilizers.  We have 454 golf courses that  pay $20 million in taxes.  So even if you don't agree with  golf courses, they do provide a  benefit to the state.  And the thing I always like to  tell people with golf courses is  imagine what else would be there  because who else can afford that  land?  Wal-Mart, shopping malls,  developments, so impervious  surfaces. 

 And so part of the aspect of my  program that I'll just mention  right now is to try to help  turfgrass managers become more  sustainable in how they manage  their turf.  So the over arching goal, and I  think you'll see this as I talk  about some of my research  projects, is to limit chemical  usage and to maintain it with  minimal inputs but still provide  that high quality turf that a  couple of the golfers in the  room probably expect.  And then the final thing is 92%  of the homeowners that were  surveyed said their lawn was  very important to them.  And what I found, being fairly  new and as you can probably tell  I always get knocked all the  time for being young and people  say I'm probably not old enough  to shave sometimes.  I was one of oddities.  I was hired right after my PhD  so I didn't go through postdocs,  or anything like that.  Excuse me.  The difference between Madison  and Milwaukee, some of the  philosophies on home lawns is  pretty interesting.  Milwaukee, they don't really  care, a lot of people I've dealt  with, they'll spray just about  anything or put a fertilizer  down.  They want it to look nice. 

 I've dealt with a lot of people  in Madison, no, no, no, I don't  want to put anything down on the  lawn that could be bad.  So I'm going to try to talk  about some things that maybe  turf isn't as bad as some people  might think.  The one thing, Nadia already  brought it up, you can imagine,  I love to play golf.  I really do enjoy the game.  I got into turfgrass pathology  because it was a way for me to  give back to a sport I really do  like.  One thing people always say of  turfgrass pathologists and our  discipline is all they do is  play golf.  And what they mean by that is  we're really focused on golf  courses even though I'm  responsible for home lawns and  athletic fields, and I like to  show this particular pie chart  because this little slice right  here, this 8%, is when they  surveyed golf course  superintendents in North  Carolina they said about 8% of  their problems or concerns deal  with diseases.  This one next to it, the 4% one  immediately to the left, my  mouse is gone here, is insects  and this one is weeds.  So of all the pest, diseases are  prime importance to golf course  superintendents.  Landscapes, this includes  athletic fields, sod farms, home  lawns, can you find that disease  pie on there?  That disease slice?  It's not there. 

 And actually if you look for  weeds it's a very, very big  part.  It's that 27%.  So with home lawns, it's  primarily considered weed  management is the main issue.  So that's outside of my area of  expertise so that's why some of  these projects you're going to  see are going to be centered  more towards golf course culture  turf instead of home lawn turf.  So what are some of the diseases  of Wisconsin?  At least as far as the turf that  we grow?  There's actually a fair number  of them.  Dollar spot, Microdochium patch,  gray snow mold, necrotic ring  spot, rust, summer patch, fairy  ring, brown patch, pythium  blight, powder mildew and  anthracnose.  One of the joys of being a plant  pathologist, I think, is we have  just wonderful names for  diseases.  There are even better ones in  other crops I won't mention.  So we have all these diseases  that I primarily work on, and  all these I have to diagnose or  have some sort of research kind  of Extension program working on  because these are extremely  important to the state of  Wisconsin.  Especially the ones I've  highlighted in bold. 

 Now the two I'm going to focus  on in the talk are dollar spot  and Microdochium patch, and I'm  going to give you an overview of  what these things are right now.  Dollar spot looks, basically,  like this.  It got its name, surprisingly  enough, because when it shows up  it's about the size of a silver  dollar.  So it's about yay big.  The symptoms are exactly what it  looks like here.  It looks like, the best way I  can describe it is if you  spilled bleach on green pants,  it kind of has that bleached  look up there.  And that's pretty typical for  dollar spot.  This is actually in a home lawn,  this is in a Kentucky bluegrass  home lawn, unfortunately in my  neighborhood.  It's not my lawn, it was a  neighbor's yard.  The patches over time can get  quite big, and you can see  severe devastation in the  landscape pretty quickly. 

 This is what it looks like on a  golf course.  This is a simulated golf course  putting green.  You can see they have these  small bleach spots.  They start off very small and  they rarely get much bigger than  the silver dollar, but what  happens is you have spots  developing right next to each  other.  So you get a coalescing of these  small spots together to kill  large areas of turf.  Here's what the actual plants  look like, when we pull out the  plants we can see all these,  what we call lesions on the  plants.  So these circular spots right in  here, all in here are all where  the fungus is actually directly  killing that leaf tissue.  So that's very, very important  for us for diagnosing things.  And if you're ever curious about  what's going on in your home  lawn, if you see something going  on, I always encourage people to  look, pull out a plant and see  if you see little spots or  lesions on the leaf plant  because if you do use our  service, we're likely to ask you  a question, what was on the leaf  blade, if you don't send us a  sample, and we can come to a  diagnosis that way.  So why is this disease  important?  Well, essentially, there was a  lot of research going on on this  particular disease from the  1920s to about the 1970s. 

 And, actually, the two  researchers who started working  on this particular disease got  their PhDs at the University of  Wisconsin in our department in  the early '20s.  They were the first guys were  worked for the USGA.    I'm sure the golfers in the  group have heard of that, that's  the United States Golf  Association.  They started actual looking or  managing turf diseases.  They were the first guys to  start doing that.  The thing that we had, basically  the '20s and up into the '70s,  is we had a whole host of really  nasty chemicals that people  could apply.  So it kept this disease at bay  for a long, long time.  So we didn't really have to look  at the basic biology of the  particular organism.  And you see the word  epidemiology in there, that's  the study of how a disease  progresses over time.  That's basically what I do with  a lot of turfgrass diseases is  how do they progress throughout  the season. 

 We see things what we call  fungicide resistance.  So this is when the pathogen  itself, the organism that causes  the problem no longer responds  to a fungicide.  You can apply it and nothing  happens.  So it's very similar to, I'm  sure you've heard of, what is  it, MRSA, the bacteria that gets  in when you're at the hospital  or something else and it's  antibiotic resistant.  Very, very similar except this  is out dealing with plants.  And then as far as nitrogen  fertility, this is something I  do like to bring up in Extension  talks because many people might  think we just throw nitrogen and  fertility out on turfgrasses,  especially on golf courses, as  much as we can.  And, actually, that's not true.  In the '60s, '70s and '80s we  did that.  We applied a lot of nitrogen to  golf courses.  One of the local golf  superintendents in town, he  remembered in the '70s he would  order a particular fertilizer  which is manufactured in  Wisconsin called Milorganite. 

 It's made from sewage sludge  from the city of Milwaukee.  You might have seen this at Home  Depot or Lowes or garden  centers.  They would order this by the  railroad car load, not by the  dump truck load.  He would order 20 to 30 railroad  cars to fertilize his golf  course.  Because the philosophy was then,  the more nitrogen, the better  the turf looked.  And as turfgrass science  developed, because it's very  young, turfgrass science has  really only been around since  really after World War II, so as  we started learning about how to  grow these grasses better, we  realized we didn't need as much  nitrogen.  So in the mid-'80s we started  backing these nitrogen rates  down.  These are two nitrogen rates I  have here underneath shift in  nitrogen fertility practices.  In the '70s and '80s it was  seven to 10 pounds of nitrogen  per thousand square feet per  year.  That's probably about 300 to 400  pounds of just nitrogen per  acre. 

 That's a lot.  Corn growers are only putting  down about 80 to 90.  And we've moved in to about that  80 to a hundred range now on  some of the golf course you  probably play.  And so what does that mean?  Well, we've had a whole host of  new diseases that we work on,  and one of them, as you see on  that list, is dollar spot.  It's a disease that thrives on  turf that doesn't have a lot of  nitrogen applied to it.  Here's probably the nuts and  bolts, this is actual money.  How does it relate to money?  What you see here up in the  left-hand corner is these are  types of courses, and what I  have listed are a municipal  course, so this is similar to  something like Odana, Glenway,  something like that that the  cities own.  We have a high-end daily fee  which would be something similar  to like University Ridge  or The Oaks out there on 94.  Midlevel private would be  something along the range of  Blackhawk Country Club right  over in Shorewood or Maple Bluff  on the east side of town.  And then we have these high  level private golf courses. 

 So things like you've maybe  heard of Medina or places where  they play a lot of the USGA  tournaments.  The one in the state of  Wisconsin is Milwaukee Country  Club.  Very, very high-end golf course.  The total budgets for some of  these things are very, very  variable.  We have municipal courses, his  entire budget including salary,  labor, for this particular one I  highlighted is about $300,000 a  year.  Of that, he spends probably  about $8,000 a year just to  control dollar spot.  A high-end daily fee, so these  are courses that people are  paying $75, $80, maybe $100 on  the weekend to play, they might  spend $600,000 to $650,000 a  year to maintain their course  and they might spend about 36  grand a year just to control  dollar spot.  And I don't think I need to read  the rest of them there, but you  can see dollar spot is the main  focus of at least disease  management and turf management  in the state of Wisconsin.  So what are some of the current  projects that we're working on  in our lab?  We're working on developing and  validating a forecasting model  for dollar spot.  So, essentially, we want to be  somewhat like the weathermen and  see if we can predict when this  disease develops. 

 Being able to do that, it allows  us to provide recommendations on  when we can target fungicide  applications better for golf  course superintendents.  And then the one that we've  worked on quite a bit is to  investigate what we call an  early season dollar spot  application.  And I'll talk about that when we  get more towards the methods.  But the primary goal of both of  these is to reduce the fungicide  usage.  So right now what a lot of  courses will do in the state is  they'll start their management  programs about June 1st.  And then they'll go every 14  days and make a fungicide  application, and they'll do that  all the way to October 1st.  So it usually amounts to about  seven to 10 applications a year  depending on what the summer is  like as far as temperatures.  And it's my belief, I think by  understanding these pathogens a  little bit better we can limit  that number at least one or two  applications a year which is, I  think, is pretty significant.  So our dollar spot forecasting  project, what have we actually  done?  So this is just the outline of  the methods here on the slides.  Essentially, what we do is we  put plots out at our research  farm and at the University Ridge  Golf Course in town, and we go  in and count those little spots  that develop every day. 

 So here's what one of the  projects look like.  And you can see we go out,  either myself, a graduate  student or an undergrad worker  we have in the lab, and we count  individual spots, and then we  paint them a different color for  each day, as you can see right  in here, and we record that.  And, at the same time, we're  recording weather data and we  use a weather station.  It's basically like a portable  weather station we put out next  to the plots, and we record  things like soil moisture, soil  temperature, air temperature,  wind speed, rainfall, relative  humidity and even solar  radiation.  So all these things, what we're  trying to do is can he find or  pinpoint some environmental  condition that best predicts  when we see those symptoms in  the field.  And what we have found so far,  this is somewhat of a  complicated graph.  I don't really understand how I  made this graph so I don't  explain it very much in detail.  What we found is when we use a  model, we have to have five days  of a particular condition for  the disease to develop.  And those two particular  conditions are relative  humidity, so basically how much  humidity is in the air, and we  need the mean air temperature to  be above 57 degrees Fahrenheit.  When we have five days of 70%  relative humidity and  temperatures above 57 degrees,  we had a 50% of chance of dollar  spot developing, and that's what  this line shows you. 

 So it's not absolutely perfect,  and the reason why we pick a 50%  probability is basically to kind  of hedge our bets.  If we move more towards the 90%  or 100% probability range, the  model probably wouldn't be  accurate.  We could miss or give people  false positives or negatives in  many cases if they're using this  particular model.  So this is one reason why I'm  sure you've all known why  weather forecasts can be a  little suspect at times because  they usually pick about a 50% to  60% probability when they're  modeling things.  And so that's why it could snow,  or it may not snow.  In this particular case, we have  a lot of data so it's a pretty  good estimate that dollar spot  is likely to develop and they  need to make a fungicide  application.  So then we have this very  complicated flow chart of how we  actually go about when we have  the model, when do we make a  fungicide application.  And I'm going to simplify this  in about one sentence.  What we do is when the computer  says conditions are right for  fungicide, we make the  application, and then we wait  again until conditions are  favorable to make that  application instead of basing it  on a calendar which is currently  what is being done.  So the way they schedule  applications now is if I started  June 1st, then June 14th I'm  making another application,  July 1st another one, July 14th  another one. 

 And right now what we want to do  is make more of a science into  it.  When are the conditions  favorable for disease  development.  This particular graph actually  shows what we've found so far.  It's not showing up very well  here so I'm just going to go to  the actual words and that when  we did this is 2009, we  forecasted with our model only  five applications.  We gave controls that are very  similar to what golf course  superintendents are used to.  So that's what we call our  industry standards.  These are the two chemicals we  used.  The reason I just put these up  here, this is what's commonly  used in the state of Wisconsin  because it's cheap.  This particular chemical,  Boscalid, is one that's becoming  the industry standard.  It's a very good chemical and  the reason why people like it is  it's very, very low mammalian  toxicity, very, very low  environmental persistence. 

 So it's something that needs to  be incorporated into management  programs, the only problem is  it's quite expensive.  So when we applied this  particular chemical on the  calendar basis, we made six  applications, and we applied the  bottom one here, Propiconazole,  we made seven applications.  So by using our model, we were  able to save at least one, maybe  two fungicide applications.  And I'll give you an idea of  what that cost savings could be  once we get through some more of  these slides.  So the other thing that we have  to do to back this up, to back  this model up because I know a  lot of people are skeptical of  modeling because it's really a  computer algorithm that we  developed.  Even though we have the data  from the field, we want to  actually test it with empirical  data.  So we've done this where we take  the dollar spot pathogen and  we've put it on a bunch of  different soils.  So in these particular slides,  we have basically a native soil  for Madison, Wisconsin, it's a  silt loam.  And then over here we have a  sandy soil.  This is what's typically put  underneath putting greens. 

 And it's usually about 80% to  90% sand to help with drainage  on putting greens.  And we wanted to look to see how  this particular pathogen grows  on these two different types of  systems.  And the nice things about this  particular research is it  doesn't grow very well below 14  degrees Celsius which is 57  degrees Fahrenheit.  If you remember that that's what  the model came out.  So that's a very nice validation  of our model there.  And it really stopped growing up  here at about 31 degrees C which  is about 89 to 90 degrees  Fahrenheit.  So once it gets that hot, which  we never got to last summer, we  only got to that for about a  week in June, the disease tends  to shut down.  That hasn't picked up in our  model yet.  We still have to collect more  data, and I think once we do  we'll see that upper range come  out.  And this just shows a line graph  of how they grew at different  temperatures. 

 Not really important, you saw  that with the particular  pictures.  Here's the actual bar graph.  I like to show this one much  better.  You can see at 11 degrees  Celsius, it grows but it's not  very happy.  It grows best when it's about  14 to 26.  So 57 to about 78 to 80 degrees  Fahrenheit is when this  particular bug likes so grow.  And so that was shown pretty  well not only with our actual  data that we collected in the  lab but what we did with our  model.  And so switching gears, going to  this early season program.  This is something that we've  looked at quite a bit in  Wisconsin where we compare a  conventional application here at  the bottom.  So this is the seven to 10  applications a year. 

 And what you're seeing, the  reason why this line is straight  is because dollar spot never  develops.  That's one reason why golf  course superintendents use this  route because they keep dollar  spot at bay for a very long  time.  One thing that we showed is you  can make a single application in  May long before the symptoms  develop and really slow the  progress of the disease.  That purple line above that, is  when we don't treat it.  So you see the single  application does a fairly nice  job of limiting the development  of the disease.  What we wanted then to expand on  to was can we make that first  application and then go into a  summer long program to help save  fungicide expenditures again.  And so this is basically our  methodology here.  I'm not going to go through  this.  Essentially, what we did is we  made our early season  applications about the first of  May, and then we followed that  up with applications of a  fungicide either 21 or 28 days  later.  And they continued through the  summer, and we compared that to  that conventional treatment, so  seven to 10 applications a year. 

 And, of course, we compare  everything, when we do field  work, we compare everything to a  non-treated control.  So we want to compare it to how  disease actually develops.  And what we've found with this  particular bar graph here is  when we make an early season  application and follow it up  with applications about a month  later, so if you go about every  month through the summer, we get  control that's almost identical  to the conventional.  So these are our early season  treatments here and here is our  conventional treatment.  These little letters to the  right mean statistically, if we  use statistics, they can't  separate out the differences  between these two treat  treatments.  So that was very, very exciting  for us, partly because, as you  can see here, this is a  pictorial of it, the non-treated  control, you can't even tell, we  had such high disease pressure  this summer it just looks like  drought.  Basically that entire plot is  dead.  The 21-day, so when we followed  it up every 21 days we didn't  get as good results.  You can see some green grass in  there but it's still pretty  blighted.  The 28-day and the conventional,  pretty much the same in picture  view there. 

 So basically the take-home  message was both strategies  suppressed dollar spot.  The 28-day was very similar to  the 14-day program.  The main thing that was very  exciting for us is we only made  five applications for the 28-day  early season program compared to  the seven for the conventional.  So what does that mean as far as  money?  So in this particular instance,  the fungicides we were using are  up here: Banner MAXX and Daconil  Ultrex.  They're very commonly used  fungicides in the golf course  industry.  The prices are listed.  $82 per acre, $84 per acre for  this one.  Which means if you combine them  it's about $170.  Which means we could save golf  course superintendents about  $4,000 if we save them one  application.  So this is why we were very  excited about not only our  forecasting model but our early  season program, as well. 

 So just the last few minutes  here I just want to talk to you  about another disease that we  work with: Snow molds.  This is a particular disease  that develops after winter  months.  They actually do need some sort  of snow cover to develop.  And one of the diseases I'll  talk about needs at least 60  days of snow cover for it to  develop.  If you have a home lawn, it  might be likely that you'll see  one of the snow molds this year.  The one that I mentioned that I  was going to talk about was  Microdochium patch.  This isn't so much of a problem  in home lawns.  This tends to be problematic on  golf courses, athletic fields  and sod farms.  It produces a symptom somewhat  similar to dollar spot, a very  small spot.  You can see it's not showing up  great on that particular  picture, but you can see the  darkened areas in there. 

 That's the actual disease.  Gray snow mold is another one.  This is the particular disease  that it needs 60 days of  continual snow cover for it to  develop.  So that particular pathogen  enjoys living under snow.  I don't know of too many  biological organisms that like  that.  It's really kind of a unique  organism.  So one of the things that we  wanted to answer with these two  diseases, with athletic fields,  sod farmers and everything, is  if we get a winter melt, we're  probably not going to get that  this year, but if we had a melt  in January, so all the snow  left, golf course  superintendents even very  high-end commercial properties  would ask us, do we need to  reapply a fungicide to control  this disease?  The reason why they ask that is  because with this particular  disease they can make one  application in October or  November and keep this disease  under control basically all  winter long and come out clean  when the snow melts.  And up until the last couple  winters, the problem was we had  very warm winters and we had  outbreaks of Microdochium patch  because we thought we were  losing this fungicidal control.  So we're using kits or a  technique we call ELISA, which  is enzyme-linked immunosorbent  assays.  This is technology that's used  in home pregnancy kits. 

 And I'll talk a little bit about  how this works, but they work by  using antibodies.  Your body produces antibodies to  viruses and things like that,  and it's a recognition  structure, essentially.  And so for our particular  experiment, this orange triangle  up here is what we're going to  call the fungicide.  That's what we're interested in.  We want to be able to detect the  amount of fungicide on the turf  leaves itself.  So if we get that off the leaves  and put it into this kit, we add  this enzyme labeled reagent that  you see here to the left and  through a couple different  steps, basically down here at  the bottom we get a reaction, so  a color reaction shows up for  us.  And we can quantify that color  reaction to tell us how much of  that chemical is on the leaf or  within the leaf.  So you're looking at me like why  do we care about that.  Well, essentially, the reason  why we care is we want to be  able to tell golf course  superintendents that there's  enough fungicide there, you  don't need to reapply.  Anybody might venture why it  wouldn't be a good idea to apply  a chemical in the middle of  winter?  >> Runoff. 

 >> Runoff, the ground is frozen.  And I'll show you some pictures  of how frozen the ground can be  when we do some of this  research.  So that's the main reason.  We don't want unnecessary  applications running into  groundwater or running off into  streams and other things.  So we use kits that are actually  commercially available for two  fungicides.  We buy these kits from Japan.  And part of the methods that we  had to work out was to develop  this for a turf system because  they were originally developed  for vegetables.  So our first problem was here  were the instructions.  [LAUGHTER]  My graduate student isn't  Japanese, so that took about  a month to get the instructions  translated for us.  I already mentioned that these  particular kits are designed to  detect the amount of pesticide  residue on vegetables. 

 So there's actually limits to  the amount of residue that can  be on vegetables and that's  where our pesticide lab in  Wisconsin uses kits like these  to detect a fungicide or  pesticide or herbicide or  whatever.  So we spent countless hours  taking, this is their actual  method that they sent us, once  they translated it out of  Japanese, and we had to adopt it  to turf.  And the main reason is this  five grams.  I know that doesn't sound like  much.  But when you actually look at  turf, it's tough to get five  grams even out of something this  tall.  So we had to change the methods  quite a bit.  We had to go to much smaller  weights.  We had to use that very abrasive  extraction procedure to break  the turf up so we make sure we  get all the fungicide in there.  And, essentially, what we found  using these kits is when we  don't treat turf we only get one  false positive.  So the kit works very, very  well, in other words. 

 It's not confounded by things  that are inherently in the plant  or from soil or anything like  that.  We were very consistent at  detecting this particular  fungicide, iprodione,  in the turf canopy.  And so what that amounts to is  we now have a quick and dirty  way that's very rapid, within  about 24 to 48 hours, that we  can detect the amount of  fungicide residue on turf  plants.  So that's another key component  in managing turf diseases.  So just to give you some  pictures of what we had to do to  get this.  This is was last year.  We have plots out, this was at  the OJ Noir facility.  You can imagine we have to get  to the grass, right?  We can have to use our front end  loader here, move the snow, and  then here up on the left-hand  side, we put in these brackets  so we'd know where our plots  were.  Those are the actual delineation  of the treatments.  And then here's the actual whole  cleared area here. 

 And then my poor graduate  student, he has to take a hole  saw with an industrial drill and  drill into the turf, and then  use a crowbar to pry that  particular plug out so we can  get just a little bit of grass  to work with.  And then we take these in to  validate the kits.  So, essentially, what we want to  know is when we make an  application, how long does it  take before the pathogen that  we're interested in, which is  Microdochium nivale, that's the  scientific name, and I encourage  you at the end if you don't have  to run away, I did bring some of  my little bugs for you to look  at if you'd like to.  This is what he looks like on a  plate.  So we put that particular  pathogen on to these plugs once  they've thawed out, of course.  We put them in these growth  chambers.  So University of Wisconsin has a  wonderful, wonderful facility  called the Biotron.  If you ever are interested, I  would highly recommend taking a  tour, it's a very nice facility.  So we put these plugs into these  wonderful scientific devices of  Tupperware containers with Saran  wrap, incubate them at a certain  temperature, and we want to  figure out how long does it take  before the pathogen can infect.  And, essentially, I don't want  to show that particular graph  because I want to focus here on  the picture. 

 This is a treated turf,  basically when we sample seven  days after treating.  And it's been inoculated,  nothing has developed.  We don't see any symptoms there.  But if we look over here to the  right, once we get out to 28  days after treatment, we see  that the pathogen can start  causing a problem.  So that's telling us that if we  do have a melt, you have about  28 days of activity for that  fungicide before it's lost.  And then we have to really  convince superintendents that  yes, you've lost that fungicidal  activity, but it's not very  ethical to be out there applying  a fungicide to frozen ground.  And this gives us a basis for  that.  We can document now that the  ground is frozen by doing some  of these experiments.  We're also using these ELISA  kits to measure runoff from some  of these plots.  So we're going to apply during  the winter so we can show that  it will run off and we can  collect it in runoff water. 

 Here's a nice picture of what it  really gets going after about 42  days after treatment.  You can see it's really working  pretty good.  And then just some graphs here  just to show you, basically,  what the temperature is like  under snow.  It tends to be very consistent.  Under snow cover it stays about  32 degrees.  Without snow, it fluctuates, as  you can imagine.  And then I thought one of the  interesting things just under  about four inches of snow cover,  there's almost no light  penetration through the snow  canopy to the turf canopy.  And that's very important for us  because light is a very  important factor for degrading  chemicals.  So that's not something that is  attributing to degradation of  the chemicals under snow cover.  So to conclude, we were able to  use this ELISA kit which is very  new to turf, not used very  often, to detect our particular  fungicide. 

 We need to do some more work on  our other kit.  We've gotten some bad kits in.  We haven't been able to work on  that one as well.  And we've found out that  fungicides last at least 28 days  when they're out in the light.  I didn't have the actual data to  show you the degradation over  time under snow cover.  My graduate student couldn't get  that analyzed in time.  So, again, I'm really happy to  be here.  Just a few acknowledgements  I have.  A couple collaborators up at the  top.  Damon Smith is a collaborator of  mine at Oklahoma State. 

 He's actually helping me with  the modeling project.  John Stier is chair of the  Horticulture Department and a  turf colleague of mine.  I didn't mention at the start of  the talk that we actually have  four faculty on campus that are  dedicated to turf.  Myself, studying diseases; we  have Dr. Stier, who is just turf  maintenance and weed management;  we have Dr. Doug Soldat, who is  our soil scientist in turf; and  we have an entomologist,  Dr. Chris Williamson.  Some of you may have seen him or  heard him on the radio.  He's been talking a lot about  emerald ash borer.  He also has responsibilities  outside of turf.  And then, of course, the people  who do the work here over here  next to me, a graduate student,  Chantel Wilson, is doing a lot  of our dollar spot work.  This is the poor fellow who has  to go out and do the winter  work.  And then this gentleman just  joined this fall and is going to  do some more nice similar work  with a different pathogen I  didn't really talk about. 

 So, again, I thank you, very  much, for the time and Nadia,  for the invite, and I'd be happy  to take any questions you have.  [APPLAUSE]