A Heart To Hart With David

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A Heart To Hart With David: Turf Matters spoke exclusively with David Hart, Managing Director of Kubota UK and covered everything from demo lorries, structural changes, Brexit and calamatics…

When David Hart took over as Managing Director of Kubota UK just over a year ago there were two things at the top of his “To Do” list. One he wanted to get his feet under his new desk and two he wanted to make sure he got to know his new charge inside out.

A Heart To Hart With David

“I probably looked under every stone I possibly could, and spoke with everyone, so that I could get to know all aspects of the business,” said David who had previously enjoyed a stellar 28 year career at John Deere.

“It’s been a good year. It’s a cliché but a change is as good as a rest and while it is an industry which I know well there are elements of the Kubota business which have been new to me,” said David, referring to the engine and construction side of the Kubota business.

It was just in the summer of last year that David took up his new role but already he has a new job title to add to that of Managing Director – the impressive sounding Vice President for Business Transformation for Europe.

“It’s not a promotion. It’s an addition,” he explained.

“It’s on top of what I was already doing. Until a couple of years ago each country operated in a different manner.

Here in the UK we did certain things in a certain way; Germany did the same; France the same; Poland the same and so on. My new role is to bring some common structures in and processes to those different sales and marketing units.”

Having carried out structural changes in his pre-Kubota days it is a role ideally suited to him, as is steering his new staff through the changes which are inherent in a business which has grown from a staff of 88 ten years ago, based out of the headquarters at Thame in Oxfordshire. to over 140 now.

Asked about any significant changes which he has implemented since he joined David points to something which, in addition to its primary aim, has eased congestion on the UK’s motorway network as well as reducing the company’s carbon footprint.

“We’ve changed how we managed our demo operation. We used to have three articulated lorries which the demonstrators drove to their destinations. I thought we could used our time better and have those guys focusing on the demonstration rather than driving the trucks. So the trucks have gone giving us a £600,000 saving.

That’s among a few things which I have streamlined since I got here.”

Another area where David has aided the environment is in a significant reduction in his own airmiles.

“The nice thing for me is that I do less travelling because for 28 years I spent 26 weeks on the year travelling and taking around 52 flights a year,” explained David, who has only been to Kubota’s worldwide headquarters in Osaka, Japan, once since he took up his new role.

“We’ve had two of our senior management over to visit us and we showed them how we operated the business here in the UK but I think the nice thing is if our Japanese bosses are comfortable with what is going on they leave you to it.”

Looking forward David is concerned with how Brexit is going to impact upon the various areas in the Kubota business portfolio.

“My biggest concern is that, with or without a deal, it isn’t going to be good. We have already seen the construction market go soft because there has been no houses built in the last three months. Groundcare has also gone soft but that is partly because last year’s dry summer meant that dealers were left with a lot of stock.

“I’d say that one of the biggestconcerns is that we are no clearer today about what will happen than we were two and a half years ago. Let’s hope that the pessimists are wrong and the optimists are right and it’s just a blimp or turns out to be something like the Millennium Bug,” said David, in a pragmatic rather than negative tone.

Another area which has been impacted by Brexit uncertainty is recruitment.

“People keeping their powder dry at the moment. If they get the offer of a lifetime they might jump ship but otherwise they are going to stay were they are until they know what the future holds. We have got seven or eight vacancies at the moment and some of them we’ve had for more than a year.”

From the customer’s perspective they can look forward to a bolstering of some of the groundcare product with some additional lines in the near future.

“Hopefully, we’ll have a bit more product offering. Not of a big scale but complementary to what we already do. We have a few irons in the fire.”

Kubota have dipped their toe in the automomous mowing, with a product range currently available in France and on its way to these shores while calamatics is another area that will be becoming more prevalent in the next few years.

“Remote diagnostics mean that we are able to connect to customers equipment and make repairs or updates from a central point which means we will be able to react to customers’ needs much more quickly become even more efficient as a company.”

David has got much further down that original “To Do” list than even he had hoped and it augers well for not just the next 12 months but many more after that.

Local Heroes For An Event That Produced A Local Hero…

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Local Heroes For An Event That Produced A Local Hero…: Scott MacCallum catches up with Royal Portrush Course Manager, Graeme Beatt, following the magnificent return of the Open Championship to the island of Ireland.

Graeme Beatt arrived home from work and poured himself a gin and tonic before settling into a chair to reflect on the events of the previous, days, weeks and months. It’s not often that you have been charged with preparing a golf course for the biggest event on the planet, and, in the case of Royal Portrush Golf Club, it was the first time in 68 years that an Open Championship had come to call.

Local Heroes For An Event That Produced A Local Hero…

Graeme smiled as he thought about the great work of his own greenkeeping team, always going that little bit beyond; how the volunteers, who had given up their time, unpaid, to contribute towards a stupendous Open venue; and how the entire club, town and island of Ireland had embraced the occasion.

The fact that the event had produced a local hero winner – if not exactly the one who had been expected to lift the Claret Jug – made the whole occasion so much more of a fairy tale.

Like most well written stories, however, the week and the lead up, had produced so many twists and turns that by the time that drink was poured Graeme was worn out.

“I had been invited to a drinks’ reception with the winner by the Championship Committee but after the trophy presentation on the 18th green I’d gone back to thank our own staff and the volunteers. I then went to lock up the sheds, got into my pick-up and drove back through the course. It was a struggle as it was still full of spectators.

“When I got to the gate I spotte my wife, Katriona, and our kids, Charlotte and Emily, walking home in the pouring rain so I picked them up. By then the plan of returning for a formal reception wasn’t too appealing so I poured a drink before we went to friends for a little while and then bed.”

Local Heroes For An Event That Produced A Local Hero…

Who could blame him? The hours he and his team were clocking up by Championship week, never mind the months leading up to it, would have had anyone tasked with implementing the Working Hours Directive applying for overtime just to log all the infractions.

“I was arriving at the course at 3.30am for a 4am start and we weren’t getting back home until half ten or a quarter to eleven at night. It was an amazing experience but at the same time we were absolutely shattered,” revealed Graeme.

All the work paid off. The course looked incredible and played superbly with weather conditions testing the players in a manner that is always hoped. The fact that Shane Lowry is a links specialist play, and, if not one of Ireland’s Major winner club members before he arrived, was regarded as a top class player. The course did identify a true champion and a true local hero.

To the question “On a scale of one to ten how happy were you with the course on the Monday of the Championship?” Graeme pondered for a moment and then said: “I’d say eight and a half.”

Top Course Managers are never satisfied, hence the missing point and a half, but Graeme had a vision of how he had wanted his Open course.

“I had a picture in my head of how I wanted the course to look, and that was to be a little bit browned off. We would have needed a few weeks of dry weather to be able to do that. The course was stunning but quite green and that wasn’t down to fertiliser, it was purely the rainfall and the warm weather. Everything greened up and stayed like that for the entire Championship.

“I was pleased with the condition of the course. I was pleased with the turf. Pleased with everything had come up and how the course played. It was just the colour really. As the Championship went on it just continued to rain and we had to do more and more to get green speed, which was the opposite if what we thought we would be doing,” said Graeme, who had to deal with 35 mil of rain in an hour just the Wednesday before Championship week. That is excessive even by Portrush standards.

“It absolutely bucketed down and we were shovelling bunker sand back and pumping water out of bunkers at eight o’clock at night. We’d been working on the bunkers for weeks taking sand out of them and reshaping them. We’d got them just right so it was really frustrating. It’s unusual to have washouts in bunkers here, but hey…”

Graeme was working closely with Alistair Beggs, Richard Windows and Adam Newton throughout the Championship, as part of the testing programme which aids course consistency.

Local Heroes For An Event That Produced A Local Hero…

“I was out with Alistair every morning while the other guys, helped by two R&A Scholars, were doing the testing. They would radio green speeds to us after a single cut and we’d decide between ourselves and Grant Moir (the R&A’s Director of Rules) if we should do another cut. It worked really well as it gave us an idea of how much extra speed you’d get from another cut, how much the green speed would drop off in the evening and how much they would drop off again by the following morning.

“The weather being the way it was meant that we were doing quite a bit of cutting – the greens were being triple cut,” revealed Graeme, keeping his staff of 60 – 54 greenkeepers  plus six part-timers who filled divots – busy for the entire week.

The aforementioned bunkers also required more than their fair share of TLC.

“The bunkers were highlighted in the years leading up to the Open as a potential issue. Our bunker sand is our own and it tends to become a bit soft when dry. Even though we were getting rain we were out in the evenings to water them down with hoses just to ensure that they were firm enough and that the ball wouldn’t plug.

“The other thing was the shape of our bunkers. The fairways are designed so that the ball rolls into the bunkers and we didn’t want the ball to roll into the sand and not stop short, so we were fly mowing every day – some of them were being done morning and night. Bit of a difference to the normal once a week!”

Graeme has been Course Manager at the club since 2014, taking over from the retiring Joe Findlay, having been Course Manager at County Sligo prior to that but he is actually from Fife. He was originally from Scotscraig, near St Andrews, and attended the rival school to your Editor, albeit Graeme was quite a number of years later!

He worked at Scotscraig Golf Club before going to the still under construction Kingsbarns. He then spent time at Royal Melbourne Golf Club, in Australia before returning to Kingbarns in 2005 before moving to Ireland the following year.

Local Heroes For An Event That Produced A Local Hero…

“I was a member at Scotscraig, which was an Open qualifier, and I had to take a young Justin Rose around the course when he was attempting to qualify in 1995. I had lunch with him and his family and I did think about saying to him here but felt that he would have so many people saying ‘Remember me?’ to him, that I decided not to in the end.”

While the Open hadn’t been confirmed during the interview process Graeme met with R&A officials as part of his selection, so was aware that the return of the Open was imminent and has been grateful to have had five years to get to grips with the course itself and the enormity of what an Open Championship brings.

The build up to this year’s Championship was more intense than any recent Open, partly due to that great gap between Northern Irish Opens and partly due to the wonderful “Dream Team” of Irish golfers produced over the last few years.

Three time Major winner, Padraig Harrington; Darren Clarke, 2011 Open Champion and Royal Portrush member (Darren struck the first shot of the Championship); Graeme McDowall, 2010 US Open Champion and another homer towner, whose brother is on the Royal Portrush greenkeeping staff, and four time Major winner and pre-Championship favourite, Rory McIlroy, who had broken the Royal Portrush course record as a 17-year-old.

So much expectation was riding on Rory’s slim shoulders that the pressure when he stood on the 1st tee was immense so perhaps it wasn’t too unexpected that his tee shot wasn’t his best. That coupled with the course’s ability to maximise any error, resulted in an opening quadruple bogey eight. That, added to a double bogey at the 16th and a triple bogey at the last, holed his chances below the waterline, and while he heroically shot a second round 65, a 14 shot improvement on his first, he missed the final two rounds by a solitary shot.

Was Graeme aware of what was happening to Rory on the first day?

Aware! He was very nearly part of the action.

“When Rory hit his first tee shot out of bounds it actually went over our heads. I’d nipped down to see him tee off and I was standing left of the fairway with my wife and kids.

Local Heroes For An Event That Produced A Local Hero…

We heard the thud of the ball as it hit the spectator and then his second tee shot landed right beside where we were. We watched him play his fourth into the rough beside the green and just groaned. You could see Rory’s nerves and if he’d played his first round the way he played his second he’d have been a factor.”

As for the other huge fans’ favourite, Tiger Woods? He too missed the cut, much to the dismay of the giant galleries.

The disappointment of losing the two biggest names, turned to elation on the Saturday, however, when Shane Lowry produced a spectacular third round 63 to give himself a handsome lead going into Sunday.

“Shane played north of Ireland golf for years and knows the course like the back of his hand. He can play in any conditions and is a links golfer with all the shots,” said Graeme.

With no-one able to mount a serious challenge on the final day Shane enjoyed a triumphant march around the links, cheered to the rafters from all corners, before holing out for a six shot victory.

One of Graeme’s most memorable moments was standing with the presentation party on the 18th green, but watching his team form a guard of honour for Shane as he marched out to collect the Claret Jug.

“I was so proud of our staff. They had done such an amazing job and pulled it out of the bag. A lot of them were local guys who had played and worked here all their lives and it was just great for everyone.”

While he was at home enjoying that celebratory gin and tonic, the team was at nearby Rathmore Golf Club, Graeme McDowall’s home club, where there was a full blown party underway and an opportunity for the everyone to let their hair down.

For Graeme, though, his work was done and he could think back with satisfaction about what had been achieved and how, after a wait of 62 years, Royal Portrush was very much back on the map and, more importantly, the Open rota.

Tackling Summer Turf Stress

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Tackling Summer Turf Stress: Last summer saw the highest level of drought stress the UK has seen for years, and many courses are still feeling the effects of this damage in 2019.

Heat and drought stress can often be hard to manage but by looking at above and below ground factors it is possible to mitigate the effects and maintain playability. Dr Colin Mumford, left, Technical Support Manager at Bayer, explains the management practices that can be implemented to protect courses this summer.

Tackling Summer Turf Stress

Above Ground – Heat Stress

Above ground, heat stress is a big issue during the summer months. Heat can cause scorch, wilt and eventually die back of the grass plant which can severely interfere with ball roll and the aesthetic appearance of the course.

“There are a number of management practices that can help to reduce the effects of heat stress,” explained Colin.

“In the US and other hot countries, they use a technique called syringing. This involves spraying a fine jet of water droplets into the air above the green.

“These fine droplets land on the turf and evaporate almost instantly. This rapid evaporation cools the canopy of the grass plant, removing a lot of heat.

“If this is done properly you can do a whole green in 30 to 45 seconds and it will be dry before the next group of golfers arrive,” said Colin.

“There is an argument that this will need to be used more in the UK as we seem to be getting hotter summers. But it’s a very labour-intensive process and just doing it once isn’t enough,” he warned.

“Greens need to be syringed at least seven times a day to keep the canopy temperature down. Most golf courses that do this have one or two people who carry out this process throughout the whole day.”

Colin adds that raising the height of cut as much as possible can help to take the stress off grass plants.

“By raising the cutting height, the plant will be able to tolerate stresses because the added growth will make it more resilient. However, by raising the cut height, ball speed on putting greens will be reduced,” he says.

“Therefore, if you decide to go down this route you may want to roll the greens afterwards to counteract the effects of the extra height.”

Colin explained that there are products that can be applied to help alleviate the effects of heat stress.

“UVA and UVB rays from the sun radiate heat on the grass plant causing heat stress. Bayer’s Stressgard formulated range can provide a protective barrier against this.

“Stressgard contains a pigment that coats the surface of the leaf, and significantly reduces the amount of UVA and UVB reaching the grass plant.

“It will also reduce Photosynthetically Active Radiation but allows sufficient PAR through for the plant to photosynthesise effectively,” said Colin.

Eoghan Buckley, Course Superintendent at Birr Golf Club, County Offaly, had problems with summer turf stress last year and used preventative applications of a Stressgard formulated fungicide, as part of his management programme, to prevent disease taking hold of his greens.

“At the end of June our greens endured a prolonged period of heat and drought stress. After taking advice from Greg Collins at Bayer and Aine Daly from Cropcare, I decided to apply a preventative fungicide to help with recovery and minimise any further stress on the plants.

“The results were positive, with the turf looking much healthier. Having witnessed these impressive results, I have integrated this into my turf management programme this year.

“So far, this year hasn’t been as hot as 2018, so my greens are looking in good condition. However, from what I learnt last year, taking a preventative approach to both turf stress and disease control can be vital,” says Eoghan.

Below Ground – Drought Stress

“Below ground it is all about water management. To make informed decisions it’s important to know what you are working with and understanding evapotranspiration is the best way to achieve this.

“ET is the combined effect of water loss through transpiration from the plant, and evaporation from the soil. It is calculated from weather data, and some weather data providers, such as Bayer’s TurfXpert app, provide a calculation of ET.

“Measurements with moisture metres around your course, to assess localised areas of your turf, are also important. When these are combined with ET data, you can calculate how much supplemental irrigation is required,” added Colin.

While there are lots of schools of thought around irrigation techniques, Colin recommends deficit irrigation as the best solution.

“It works by replacing between 60% to 80% of water loss, which means the soil is able to take in additional water during a rainfall event and none of it is lost through drainage,” he explained.

“This way you can make the most of rainwater and save costs on irrigation.”

He warns drainage is not only costly in terms of water loss but also because of nutrient loss.

“If drainage occurs it can leech away nitrogen and other inputs, potentially causing environmental damage and cost to the greenkeeper.”

To combat this, Colin recommends carrying out an audit of irrigation systems to ensure they are running efficiently and used wisely.

“Irrigation is a beneficial tool but if it’s overused, problems with thatch build up and annual meadow grass can occur. This is why getting management techniques and calculations right is vital,” he said.

Below Ground – Pests

Another below ground factor is the damage caused by chafer grubs and leather jackets.

“These pests can have a huge impact on the health of grass plants at this time of year,” said Colin.

“Chafer grubs and leather jackets damage the roots of grass plants meaning the grass plant can’t take up water and nutrition, leading to drought stress effects.

“There may be plenty of water and nutrition present in the soil, but because the roots are damaged, they can’t take it up. The grass plants will then show signs of drought stress, scorching and ultimately will die back.

“In this case, the only short-term answer is irrigation. However, in the long term you can tackle the pest with cultural, biological and chemical controls to prevent damage from happening.

“Introducing new grass species that have rhizomes, fescues for example, into these areas can help with this.

“The rhizomes act as a tube of stored energy below ground which helps the grass plant to cope with a degree of attack from pests.

“Aeration can also be used to create channels for the roots to grow though, allowing them to descend quickly and easily to scavenge more water and nutrients,” adds Colin.

“As greenkeepers you strive to maintain the health and playability of your course. So, doing everything that you can both culturally and chemically is paramount, especially during the hot summer months,” concluded Colin.

Talk of the Toon

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Talk of the Toon: In meeting a host of people from the industry over the years, it’s not unusual to hear someone say they wished they’d moved into their role earlier in their career. So, when Duncan Toon uttered those very words during a visit to Warwick School it didn’t come as a complete surprise.

What was surprising, however, is that Duncan, who was appointed Grounds Manager at Warwick Independent Schools Foundation in June of last year, had come from an excellent job at one of the country’s top football clubs – and he is yet to dip his toe into his 30s!

Talk of the Toon

As Deputy Head Groundsman at Birmingham City’s Training Ground, Duncan was dealing with highly skilled footballers, managers and coaches, and experiencing the buzz of Saturday afternoon home games or midweek matches under the lights at St Andrews. But it is the challenge of preparing eight hectares of natural turf and a brand new 3G rugby pitch for children of all ages which is now really getting his juices flowing.

The Foundation comprises King’s High School for girls aged 11-18 (incorporating Warwick Preparatory School for boys and girls aged 3-7 and girls aged 7-11) and Warwick School for boys aged 7-18. I met with Duncan at Warwick School, which is reputed to be the oldest boys’ public school in the world, having a history stretching, remarkably, back to 914. The focal point of the Warwick School’s sporting facilities is the truly magnificent sports pavilion, one that would do credit to many a County Cricket Ground.

The Halse Pavilion was revamped and modernised in 2013 and was opened by Lord Coe, just year after being Mr London Olympics.

“Working for top end football, at the elite end of sport, was rewarding but the focus was always football. The challenges and the rewards of moving to a multi-sport environment are massive,” said Duncan, as he showed me round his impressive place of work.

“Also, the investment levels schools now make in their maintenance facilities means there are fewer differences to football clubs than you might expect.”

In that regard, Duncan found himself to be very much the right man at the right time because his appointment coincided with a decision by the Foundation to invest significantly in its sports facilities. As a result, Duncan has benefited from being given the freedom to restructure and expand the team and to purchase a range of new machinery to enable the highest standards to be achieved.

Prior to Duncan’s arrival the small team was battling gamely, with minimal and aging machinery, to prepare pitches and keep the grounds under control. The schools were achieving huge successes in sport and winning national competitions, but the strain on resources was beginning to show and investment was needed to ensure pupils could continue to enjoy high quality sporting provision in the long term.

“When I first started, time frames for preparing pitches were tight, making us hugely vulnerable to weather disruption,” recalled Duncan.

Talk of the Toon

“I came for my interview during, last year’s heatwave and the grounds were burnt up and not in the best of shape. The team was doing a great job, but it was clear additional resources were going to be needed. If it had been a wetter summer, with the grass growing, it would have been a real challenge to keep on top of it.”

That heatwave did, however, prove to be the silver lining around the rainless clouds – it’s a stupid meteorologically- based metaphor, I know, but run with it – as it was the catalyst for the first of the School’s major investments at the start of Duncan’s time at the school.

“The first thing we did was put in a borehole – it basically sold itself. I got in a specialist to advise us and within two months it had been approved and then drilled and it has helped us enormously. We have a license for 20,000 litres a day and we are no longer running static sprinklers off taps. That was expensive, so in the long run our borehole will save us money as well as make our lives so much easier.”

With that solution in place, next in line was the machinery.

“The school had invested in a Toro Sidewinder which is great, but we still needed bigger machines and our tractors were very old. I sat down with the Deputy Head of Estates & Operations, Sam Hanson in early March 2019 and we prepared a presentation to ask the Governors for additional investment, which they agreed. It has allowed us to purchase a number of carefully-selected machines to ensure we are fully resourced going into the future,” revealed Duncan.

Among them is the Dennis PRO 34R which has been a huge benefit on both presentation and clean-ups.

“We use it to clean the pitch up after rugby matches and also after training sessions and the brush on the front is a big bonus as it enables you to really get into the sward.

“You’re achieving two key maintenance tasks with it – you are cleaning up all the debris and you are also getting that amazing finish.

I’m really impressed with it.

“They have been arriving over the last few months and everything should be here in time for the start of the next academic year in September.”

With the machines coming on stream, Duncan then had to ensure that there was a quality team to utilise them. His first recruit was Scott Danter, who came from West Warwickshire Sports Centre and started at the same time as Duncan.

“He’s a brilliant worker with a real work ethic and bought into everything we were doing here,” said Duncan, who seems to have a magic touch when it comes to building a strong team, with both existing staff and the new staff recruited over the last 12 months being fully committed to the new regime.

Duncan’s new Deputy, Matt Barnes, was the second appointment, bringing experience in the independent schools sector. He was enticed by the Foundation’s “Project One Campus” which will bring all its schools together in one location by building a new home for King’s High, currently located in the town centre, on the same site as Warwick School and Warwick Preparatory School. King’s High is moving across this summer, with the final elements of the project delivered in September 2020.

Talk of the Toon

Warwick School has historically been a noted rugby school, having produced many fine players in its time, but in reality offers outstanding opportunities in a range of other sports, as does King’s High. The site’s sporting provision allows for cricket, hockey, netball, athletics, rounders and more. It has meant a significant learning curve for Duncan, but he is making full use of the wonderful knowledge-sharing opportunities across the industry.

“I’ve been asking questions of everyone – left, right and centre – and having taken on staff with experience has been important too.”

Those whom Duncan has been grateful to learn from include Gary Barwell, of Edgbaston, current Groundsman of the Year, and Andy Richards, Head Groundsman of Shrewsbury School.

“Before getting the job and starting, I did a lot of reading up and Andy Lee, Head Groundsman at Birmingham Training Ground, helped me to get in touch with various people which was extremely helpful.”

Since taking over, Duncan has brought some of the approaches adopted for a regular match days at a top football club into life at the Foundation.

“Working at the training ground involved a busy schedule; there was a non-stop nature to the job and an awareness that you have to finish your job before someone else can start. That approach really helps a team to thrive and is one the revitalised team here has fully embraced.” he explained.

Ah, that team. It has doubled in size and is now six strong: it says much for the endeavours of the team before Duncan’s arrival that even now they have to work flat out to maintain a site measuring 11 hectares all in.

Having received everything he has asked for over the first year of his time in the job, Duncan has put himself under pressure to deliver on all fronts.

“A healthy sense of expectation is what we all need to give of our best. The whole team wants better, and we have been empowered to achieve it. We’ve got a fantastic team and some great machines. The only way I can see us going is up.”

The 3G rugby pitch, with its bright blue border, sits at the heart of the facility and Duncan has ensured that some of the new machines purchased were made to ensure that expensive  new pitch was cared for throughout its lifespan. “You must invest in machines to maintain the 3G because they aren’t maintenance free. A lot of hours go into keeping it up to a top standard.”

“With the industry growing so fast, I like to take advantage of the new technologies coming out. Our initial athletic and rugby markings are done by GPS, saving time and making  sure the markings are perfect.”

Listening to Duncan, he comes over as unflappable and organised and when he says that his ambition for where the school will be in five year is to have standards as high as is possible – “I really think we will be up there” – you can’t help but believe him.

The good news for Duncan is that when it comes to ambition – being on the desirable side of 30 – he will have plenty of time to fulfil them.

The Agronomic Elephant In The Room

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The Agronomic Elephant In The Room: Dr Minshad Ansari, left, discusses the Leatherjacket and Chafer Grub problem with Scott MacCallum.

The agronomic elephant in the room over the last 15 years has been what on earth will we do when chemicals we’ve relied upon for decades to ensure our turf can fight back against attacks from pests and diseases are removed from the authorised lists.

The Agronomic Elephant In The Room

We have benefited from the great work being carried out in laboratories across the world to replace those active ingredients, which are no longer with us, with alternatives which have often been more effective and better than what they have replaced.

However, there is one area in which the loss of the recognised chemical has had a major impact on the quality of turf greenkeepers and groundsmen have been able to prepare.

Leatherjackets and Chafer Grubs are relishing the freedom that a chemical-free playground has given them and the damage they are inflicting on turf is enough to reduce the most stoic of turf managers to tears.

It has got so bad in recent times that an Emergency Summit was held by Dr Minshad Ansari, Founder and CEO of Biomena, to pool all necessary expertise and look at what could be done to counter the Leatherjack and Chafer Grubs infestations.

The Agronomic Elephant In The Room

“I’ve been in the industry for 10 years now and seen the widening problem of Leatherjackets and Chafer Grubs but even I was surprised when I saw the damage caused by Leatherjackets at a golf club in Kent. Five greens were completely destroyed as a result of the damage,” Dr Ansari, told Turf Matters.

“Whereas it was very easy to put the chemical pesticide into a tank and go off and spray the recognised active ingredients came off the lists in 2016 and there has been no alternative. The problem is going to accelerate if few don’t do anything,” he explained, of the imidacloprid and chlorpyrifos which have now been banned.

A short term sticking plaster solution has been found with Syngenta receiving emergency authorisation for Acelepryn reapproved for turf for the 2019 season. It has been permitted for use in situations where there is an acknowledged instance of economic damage, or risk of bird strike on airfields and where the product has been recommended by a BASIS qualified agronomist.

The approval will be in place until September 30 of this year.

The Emergency Summit has a host of influential speakers including Professor John Moverley, of the Amenity Forum; Dr Kate Entwistle, and Dr Colin Fleming, and covered topics including Major turf pests and disjeases; the rising threats of plant parasitic nematodes in turf; the biology of Chafers and Leatherjackets; the role of Biostimulants in turf management and root development. Dr Ansari is working closely with Swansea University on biological solutions using nematodes and ensuring that they are utilised to best effect to bring about the most effective outcomes.

“Nematodes do produce results but we have to learn how to use them properly otherwise people will be dissatisfied with the results. There is a way to apply them to get the best results. We are looking at the Leatherjacket and Chafer Grub lifecycle, at which stage they cause damage and at which stage are they most susceptible to nematodes. Learning about the pest is important in order to get the control we are looking for,” said Dr Asari.

The Agronomic Elephant In The Room

“The nematodes can do the job if they are applied in the proper manner – without a problem.”

If there was a key headline to have come out of the Emergency Summit it was that Integrated Pest Management was the solution going forward.

“Whether you have a chemical or biological product you have to use it in such a way that you can get the best control of the pest. There is no single solution,” explained Dr Ansari, who added that better results are achieved by using a wetting agent in conjunction with the use of the nematodes.

Should the status quo remain, more golf courses will be rendered unplayable, or less enjoyable to play, and the work being carried out to find means to resolve the problem is welcome and necessary.