TENNIS
Centre Court two weeks after completion of renovation (including seeding and top dressing). The eff ect of Attraxor can be seen on Poa along near edge of the court
we’ll trial on a few more courts and keep increasing until we’re comfortable using the new technique or product everywhere. However, the timeframe presented to us for 2020 meant that we needed to make a decision quickly, based on other people’s anecdotal evidence, and any research we could fi nd.
Fortunately, the body of research out there on Prohexadione was substantial enough to convince us that bringing Attraxor straight into use across all our courts during the end of the grass court season, and into our renovations, was the right thing to do. In interpreting the research we came across, we made two key observations. Firstly, academic studies seemed to suggest that Prohexadione aff ects diff erent grass species to a greater or lesser extent at a fi xed dose rate. In the sources we read, the sort of range of diff erence indicated Poa species only required about a third of the amount of active ingredient that Ryegrass would require to illicit the same level of growth regulation. In other words, at a given
dose rate Poa Annua is impacted around three times more than Perennial Ryegrass. By comparison, Trinexapac-ethyl seems to induce a fairly uniform response across diff erent species at a fi xed application rate; something we’ve noted when using the active ingredient, as well as being refl ected in the reading we did.
Secondly, we came across sources that suggested Prohexadione created a more ‘instant’ eff ect on grass plants compared to Trinexapac-ethyl. These sources hypothesised that the fast-acting characteristic of Prohexadione, coupled with the relative strength of the product in its ability to eff ect Poa Annua caused a greater level of seed head suppression. Equipped with this research, we therefore made the decision to switch to Attraxor for the applications of Plant Growth Regulator associated with our end of season renovations. For several years now, we’ve applied Primo Maxx after the courts have been cleaned out, but prior to seeding and topdressing. This has allowed us to slow the
growth of existing grass within the sward in order that the new seed can establish, and topdressing settle before we need to get on to the surface to carry out initial mowing. This process has worked extremely well, and given our knowledge of Attraxor, we saw no risk in switching products to accomplish this. We also caveated the decision to move to Attraxor with a safety net of sorts, that if we began to see any adverse results as we worked our way through the courts, we would withdraw from using the product for this year and revert to our normal way of slowly experimenting with new innovations until we were comfortable with the product’s eff ects. The fi rst court to be renovated was our Centre Court; if we’re honest it’s the last court we would want to trial a new product on. However, with our hand forced, we carried out an initial application once the court had been scarifi ed. We opted to utilise the full dose rate for a single application as set out by the product label (1.5kg per hectare) and applied with a small amount of
Sue Lawrence overmarking the Centre Court base-line during 2020 playing season 94 PC February/March 2021
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