Mailbag

Golf Course News, May 2003

MAILBAG: MORE COURSES SHOULD JOIN AUDUBON

TO THE EDITOR:

You raise an excellent question in your editorial (GCN, March 2003). Are most golf courses in line with Audubon International and are they already practicing IPM? I think that the answer is yes.

I am in the process of becoming certified through Audubon International and have found that my IPM program fulfills many of the requirements. What superintendent doesn't watch weather conditions and scout to monitor disease pressure? More and more golf courses are updating to centrally controlled irrigation, installing environmentally responsible wash areas and building safer chemical storage facilities. Inviting a local school to participate in creating naturalized areas, putting up some bird houses and mapping your golf course are the additional requirements.

Why don't more superintendents write up a plan to fulfill these things, have it approved, then go back and implement and document that they are actually accomplishing these goals? Because it is time-consuming and can appear to be a lot of paperwork just to prove what we already know and do at our facility.

However, I recently witnessed a county official state that "we all know golf courses pollute." What will his response be when I tell him we are a Certified Sanctuary and I have the documentation to prove it? think it is worth heading off the critics.

Sincerely,

Scott Brooke, superintendent The Golf Club at Hawks Prairie Lacey, Wash.

ROSE: OUR PLANTS WON'T PRODUCE TRANSGENIC POLLEN

TO THE EDITOR:

In a recent article ("Debate over Roundup Ready bent rages on" GCN, March 2003), Dr. Bob Harriman from Scotts Co. was quoted as saying, "Gene escape in male-sterile varieties is still possible because you still have fertility, gene flow and sexuality in half the system. It doesn't make it an ounce safer." Dr. Harriman does not understand that the male-sterile Penn A-4 plants containing the transgene for herbicide resistance cannot contaminate the environment because they have no pollen. The only truth in Bob Harriman's statement is that the seed we market will have some normal plants with normal pollen, which is no different from the Penn A-A we market today. What needs to be clarified is that our transgenic plants will never produce fertile transgenic pollen. There lies the difference in our production practices. The Scotts/ Monsanto production can and will pollinate, spreading transgenic glyphosate resistant pollen.

All the standard bentgrass production practices noted in the article are adequate for seed containment and have proven satisfactory for normal certified seed production. The new problem that is now presented is pollen containment. There are approximately 6,000 pollen grains produced for each seed. With a pollen grain contributing half the DNA to a seed, and in this case carrying the Roundup gene, pollen containment is essential to prevent gene trespass to other Agrostis species. A study by Pure Seed Testing showed that transgenic pollen was received by Agrostis plants 3,000 feet away in the first year. The I 1,000-acre control area does little good when pollen grains live one to three hours and the wind blows five miles per hour. Even with dedicated equipment, pollen trespass will contaminate the irrigation district and then move on to other areas in successive generations.

Sincerely,

Bill Rose, president

Hybrigene; Turf Seed and Tee2-Green

COOK DISPUTES ACTIVIST'S SCIENTIFIC CLAIMS

Editor's note: In response to several readers who questioned Jay Feldman's science in his Point "Golf contaminates environment" (GCN, March 2003), Golf Course News turned to Dr. Tom Cook, associate professor of horticulture at Oregon State University to put golf course pesticide use in the proper perspective.

It is difficult to respond to this kind of sweeping condemnation of golf course pesticide use. By combining a hodgepodge of miscellaneous claims with no apparent context, the author has created a scary image of impending doom. All I can do is ask some questions.

1. How can anyone fairly evaluate the relative intensity of pesticide use without factual information?

The amount of pesticide applied per treated acre is an argument that has been used for many years. This argument exaggerates and skews the actual use of pesticides in my opinion. For example, if a 150-acre planting of corn received a pre plant herbicide application at one pound of active ingredient (ai) per acre followed by two later applications of insecticide for corn earworm each at one pound of ai per acre, what would the statistics show? They would show a total of three pounds of ai per treated acre. They would also show a total of 450 pounds of ai applied to the corn crop.

If you had a 150-acre golf course with two acres of putting greens and those greens received six fungicide treatments at one pound of ai per acre plus two insecticide applications at one pound of ai per acre, what would the statistics show? Total pesticide ai per treated acre would be eight pounds. Total pesticides applied per 150-acre golf course would be 16 pounds of ai. Which site used the most pesticide? Per treated acre, the golf course did. Per site, the farm used 450 pounds vs. 16 pounds for the golf course. If I want to defend golf courses, I talk about total pesticide use for the entire area. If I want to disparage golf courses I talk about pesticide use per treated acre.