Syngenta held an event for Turf distributors in the Nordic countries, and they asked me to come along to talk about the Turf Advisor app, they didn’t need to ask twice!
Jealott’s Hill, for those who haven’t visited is focused around early stage discovery – finding the seeds of an idea which may one day go on to become a product we can use (I say ‘one day’ because it can take 10+ years).
It also does the downstream herbicide R&D work, but as we only have one herbicide in the UK & Ireland portfolio at the moment (more to come in the future) it makes Stein’s field of research more interesting to turf managers!
I had planned to come back with a phone full of great pictures of the trials site and labs to share, but forgot that as a cutting edge research site they have strict rules against photography, so pictures were only allowed in limited areas sorry. (I’ve filled in a few photos based on what I got to see, to give a flavour)
Syngenta spends a lot of time and money screening huge libraries of compounds to discover the next big thing in disease or pest control, they don’t want me messing all that up!
The way it works generally is they can leverage their size to undertake the required R&D work. The aim being to bring something to market, get the active and then product registered for crop farmers, we in the turf side of the business watch on excitedly for anything which may have a useful application in turf grass situations.
It was great to have to tour of the facility to understand all that, and see the turf trial site. The turf lab and trial site mean Syngenta can internally test products as concepts to for the sports turf market.
Early stage testing
That may be the disease simply incubated on agar – no grass plant in sight. This strips out most of the variables and makes the results more binary:
Did product XXX control the fungi? Yes/No
By the time we get to full field trials we have hundreds of additional variables which could have lead to a given result:
Did we get disease on the golf course?
Were conditions OK for the product application?
Is the turf in an acceptable condition for the test?
All of these cloud the picture at this stage when we first need to know « Can it work?«
Full field trials come with a hefty price tag, take a long time to complete and can fail if the right conditions are not met (may have a drought, or outbreak of a different disease on the turf that season) so for the early screening we want to get it narrowed down fast.
Pot trials
If that went well, and in concept the product stops the disease then you can progress to a more realistic situation.
The product may kill your host grass plant along with the fungi – no good for turf managers – turf safety has to be assured!
The fungi may be entirely living inside the plant and so a product which cannot enter the plant may have no effect…
Much more real – but equally many more variables to consider. Its slower to churn these studies out as you need to wait for your turf pots to reach the right growth stage and density etc.
Small plots
Small plots would be next, they bring in even more real life conditions, where possible giving plots as normal a maintenance regime as possible.
Stein undertakes research activities as described above for plant protection products generally, but also specifically for turf. So it was great to get to visit and discuss the the details with them!
After the tour Glenn Kirby had a talk on future pipeline and where digital can support turf managers.
Me and Alex Cawley (my equivalent for the Nordics (but much taller)) spoke about the Turf Advisor app, as it’s soon to be launched in the Nordic countries.
They face very different conditions to the UK & Ireland but like us, so many of their day to day decisions are driven by the weather and the agronomic situation.
Syngenta will continue to invest in bringing products to the market with work from sites like Stein, and as we see more biological solutions being evaluated I can see that digital support tools will become more and more essential to help us achieve the best from them in real life situations.
