Fungicides and disease intensity

I wrote about this topic five months ago at PACE Turf.

• Dollar spot: reduced disease severity with reduced fungicides

In that update, I shared some key points from Chou et al.’s article Fungicide use intensity influences the soil microbiome and links to fungal disease suppressiveness in amenity turfgrass, including:

The results showed that plants grown in the transplanted soil microbiome collected from sites with lower fungicide intensities exhibited reduced disease severity."

“intensive fungicide usage can decrease the activity of beneficial soil microbes and lead to a more disease conducive microbial environment in turfgrass.”

I was fortunate to cross paths with the lead author of this paper, Ming-Yi Chou, at the 15^th International Turfgrass Research Conference in Karuizawa, Japan. He agreed to join me for this video to discuss his exciting research.