Golf courses go greener

Turfgrass managers have taken up the mantle of sustainability.  Over the past decade, a number of golf courses around the country have even started to "go organic"!

Some of the alternatives to synthetic pesticides proposed by one golf course site include:

1. Beneficial insects
2. Beneficial nematodes
3. Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis)
4. Compost
5. Corn gluten
6. Fish emulsion
7. Garlic oil/juice
8. Horticultural oils (vegetable-based instead of petrochemical based)
9. Kelp/seaweed extracts
10. Lemon & vinegar formulations
11. Lime
12. Beneficial microbes and microbial derivatives
13. Milky spore
14. Neem
15. 100% "organic" fertilizers
16. Pheromone lures
17. Pyrethrin/pyrethrum
18. Rock dust minerals
19. Biopesticides
20. Products on the national list of approved substances established under the Organic Foods Product Act of 1990
21. Products approved as organic by duly accredited certifying organizations such as the Northeast Organic Farming Association (NOFA) and the Organic Materials Review Institute (OMRI)

And some of the proposed prohibited substances include:

1. All synthetic chemical pesticides
2. Arsenic
3. Biosolids derived from sewage sludge or industrial waste (i.e. Milorganite)
4. Genetically modified products, ingredients, or seeds (endophytically enhanced seed and improved grass seed cultivars produced through conventional breeding programs are not GM and therefore are permitted.)
5. Piperonyl butoxide and other synthetic ingredients
6. Pyrethroids
7. Tobacco
8. Pesticides dispensed by automatic misting systems

For further reading:

* Sustainable golf courses: a guide to environmental stewardship

* Ecological golf course management

* "Pesticide Exposure from Residential and Recreational Turf" and "Lawn and Turf: Management and Environmental Issues of Turfgrass Pesticides" in Hayes’ handbook of pesticide toxicology

* Alternative turfgrasses for more environmentally sustainable golf course management: velvet bentgrass putting greens and fine fescue/colonial bentgrass fairways

* Turfgrass chemicals and pesticides: a practitioner’s guide

* Turf problem solver: case studies and solutions for environmental, cultural, and pest problems

* Proceedings of the IInd International Conference on Turfgrass Science and Management for Sports Fields: Beijing, China June 24-29, 2007

* Golf course irrigation: environmental design and management practices

* Water quality and quantity issues for turfgrasses in urban landscapes
 
* Managing wetlands on golf courses

* USGA Turfgrass and Environmental Research Online (TERO)

Updated: Crop Protection Compendium

UW-Madison Libraries subscribe to the Crop Protection Compendium database from CABI, which is now available on their new interface in beta.

This online multi-media resource can be searched by keyword, or browsed by animals (arachnids, molluscs, nematodes, birds, mammals), bacteria, fungi, oomycetes, plants, protozoa, unknown aetiology, and viruses.  It includes:

* 2,800+ detailed data sheets on crops, crop pests, diseases, weeds, invasive plants, natural enemies, pesticides and biopesticides

* Information on an additional 27,000 species, including distribution maps

* 8,000+ pictures to allow for easy identification and teaching

* 200,000 article records from the CAB Abstracts database (updated weekly), including 6,500 full-text journal and conference articles

* 9,000+ term interactive glossary

Plant Variety intellectual property seminar: 4/24

"Plant Variety Protection Boot Camp"
Graduate School Seminar Series

Friday, April 24, 2009
1:30 – 3:30 PM
Biotechnology Center Auditorium
425 Henry Mall, Madison, WI

This seminar will provide useful information for plant researchers regarding the "ins and outs" of the plant variety protection act. Specifically, this seminar will examine the steps involved in filing a plant variety protection act application, including suggestions for collecting the information required for filing a plant variety protection act application and enforcement of plant variety protection certificates, including a discussion of "essentially derived varieties."  Presented by Lisa Mueller, Attorney, Dykema Gossett PLLC.

Graduate School Seminar Series sessions are open to all members of the campus community.

Registration is required, through the Office of Human Resource Development website.  To register, you must know the titles of both the series and the session.

IPM & pesticide trial data

The UW-Madison Libraries are a sponsoring partner of the Plant Management Network portal, which includes Plant Disease Management Reports and Arthropod Management Tests.

Plant Disease Management Reports - formerly "Fungicide & Nematicide Tests" and "Biological & Cultural Tests for Control of Plant Disease"

• Cereals and Forage Crops
• Citrus, Tropical, Vegetables, and Miscellaneous Crops
• Field Crops
• Nematicides (all crops)
• Ornamentals and Trees
• Pome Fruits
• Seed Treatments (all crops)
• Small Fruits
• Stone Fruits and Nuts
• Turfgrass

Arthropod Management Tests

• Host Index - plants/animals/structures on which arthropod management tested
• Arthropod Common Name Index
• Arthropod Scientific Name Index
• Materials Evaluated (Brand Name) Index
• Chemicals Evaluated Name Index
• Sections Index
• Author Index

Global Research on Cocoa

GRO-Cocoa
- "Global Research On Cocoa: Working with and for farmers" - is a twice-yearly newsletter funded by the USDA and created by CABI.

All issues of the newsletter are available free online, back to issue #1 in June 2002.

CABI is "a not for profit, intergovernmental organization that improves people's lives worldwide by providing information and applying scientific expertise to solve problems in agriculture and the environment." They are publishers (ex: CAB Abstracts), researchers, consultants, and purveyors of microbial research services.

You may also be interested in:

• Bitter chocolate: the dark side of the world’s most seductive sweet
• Trichoderma stromaticum for management of witches’ broom of cacao in Brazil, chapter in Biological control: a global perspective
• Chocolate (video)
• The chocolate tree: a natural history of cacao
• Chocolate in Mesoamerica: a cultural history of cacao