How The PCNB Ban Will Affect Courses…

The United States Environmental Protection Agency recently issued a stop use on all products derived from technical grade PCNB (pentochloronitrobenzene). In the turf world PCNB was well-known as an effective and economically efficient fungicide used to protect against turf diseases such as leaf spot and more importantly snow mold. The chemicals effectiveness and cost made it very popular among golf course superintendents. However, now that the EPA has released this order, superintendents are scrambling to figure out how they are going to replace PCNB in there spraying program with winter quickly approaching.

Gray Snow Mold

The timing of this issue has proven to be extremely inconvenient seeing as how most superintendents, especially those here in the northeast, had planned a strict budget throughout the season and now moving into the fall are being forced to adjust their programs which may not have mad much breathing room to begin with. Prior to the ban PCNB was the most cost-efficient chemical for winter protection from snow mold. This was especially true when it came to fairway sprays which are very costly due to the much larger area that must be covered. While an 18-hole course would typically have 150,000 square feet of area to cover for greens, for fairways it could have somewhere in the ranges of 800,000 square feet that would need to be sprayed.

This has left most superintendents with two options. They can either come up with the money for alternative chemicals such as ipridione or chlorotalonil or they can forego winter fairway applications altogether. Neither of these options are appealing. Upgrading to a more expensive chemical at this point in the year would likely put a superintendent over budget and hinder them from being able to afford the projects they needed to get done in the fall. On the other hand if they decided to skip a winter application for fairways they would be at the will of mother nature as far as how their fairways would be able to handle the winter disease pressure. No application in the late fall could mean a brutal spring and a lot of damage to recover from once the snow melts.

Either way the new ban on PCNB will certainly have negative effects on courses around the country and should this ban end up being permanent it will definitely cause a lot of headaches to the countries superintendents for years to come.