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Publications

NIBIOs employees contribute to several hundred scientific articles and research reports every year. You can browse or search in our collection which contains references and links to these publications as well as other research and dissemination activities. The collection is continously updated with new and historical material.

2009

Abstract

The most important and widespread disease on golf courses is Microdochium nivale. It is a psycrotrophic fungal plant pathogen that is the main cause of biotic winter injury in grasses in the temperate and sub-arctic climates, both with and without snow cover. It is an opportunistic pathogen, with the ability to attack plants under a wide range of environmental conditions. A large variation in both host preference and aggressiveness among isolates has been documented. It is speculated that these traits as well as competition between isolates may be dependent on temperature. The fungus is spread by infected seeds and from infected plants or debris. Besides seed transmitted inoculum, it is not clear whether the primary inoculum source is wind dispersed ascospores or soilborne/plant debris borne inoculum. Wind borne ascospores has been claimed to be the main inoculum source, but perithecia are hardly observed on grasses on Norway. The aim of the present project was obtain better understanding of what is the source of primary inoculum for snow mould caused by M. nivale; to understand how inoculum of M. nivale survives from spring to fall, and from year to year, to understand how climatic conditions affects the potential inoculum by monitoring symptoms on plants, occurrence of the fungus and growth characteristics in vitro of strains sampled from snow melt and through summer and autumn. To obtain such knowledge, surveys and sampling on selected golf courses was conducted. Snow mould symptoms and the occurrence of M. nivale in leaves and stems of grasses sampled from golf greens and foregreens was reduced during the growth season. We also found that M. nivale could be isolated from locations without visible symptoms. Despite a lower isolation rate in autumn, M. nivale was again isolated in some of the originally locations, the following spring. The M. nivale isolation rate was similar from sites located on greens compared to foregreens, and from greens located at more sunny sites compared to more shadowy located greens. We conclude that this fungus seem to survive from year to year within the same locations on greens and foregreens.