ABSTRACT
Maintenance of turfgrass quality on golf courses requires the use of fungicides because genetic resistance and cultural management strategies do not provide adequate control of many diseases. Anthracnose, Pythium blight, dollar spot, and brown patch are diseases of turfgrasses for which predictive models have been developed. This chapter describes predictive models for these diseases, weather data collection systems, and future prospects for the use of disease models for turfgrass management. Dollar spot, caused by the fungi Lanzia and Moellerodiscus spp., is a common foliar disease on most turfgrasses. On golf courses, more fungicide applications are made to control dollar spot than any other disease. On close-cut turfgrass, brown patch appears as an irregular to round patch, up to 1 m in diameter. Increasingly, electronic controllers and monitors are being used to guide turfgrass management decisions. Irrigation on many golf courses is now being controlled by microcomputers linked to automatic weather stations.
