Response of Bentgrass Cultivars to Microdochium nivale Isolates Collected from Golf Courses

Pink snow mold, caused by Microdochium nivale, is a major disease on cool season turfgrasses in golf courses in northern Unites States. The relative susceptibility of 17 commercial cultivars of three bentgrass species (creeping, colonial and velvet bentgrass) to Microdochium nivale and the aggressiveness of M. nivale eight isolates obtained from infected turfgrasses on golf courses in Wisconsin were evaluated under controlled conditions. For the field trial, susceptibility of 2 year-old 12 commercial bentgrass cultivars was evaluated after inoculating three M. nivale isolates in the fields. There were significant differences in disease severities among the three bentgrass species, particularly between tetraploids (creeping and colonial) and diploid (velvet) species, and among cultivars within each species, indicating that there are varying levels of susceptibility in species and cultivars to M. nivale. Host resistance by days of cold hardening was confirmed, by detecting the resistance by 30 days of cold hardening treatments. In field trial, susceptibility of 12 bentgrass cultivars was highly correlated to the results obtained from growth chamber experiments. The positive correlation of the susceptibility between growth chamber experiments and field trials demonstrates that the growth chamber method is a useful technique for saving time, space and labor to evaluate efficiently pink snow mold susceptibility of bentgrass cultivars. This study could be applied to evaluating susceptibility of bentgrass to pink snow mold and also predicting a prospective evaluation of bentgrass cultivars to pink snow mold in fields in a breeding program.