Acceptance of BASF’s Intrinsic line of Honor and Insignia fungicides has been much better than expected since last year’s coming out party at GIS Orlando, even if there has been some confusion on the part of end users about the name of the two products.

“We hear superintendents say, ‘hey, I sprayed some Intrinsic yesterday,’ ” said BASF technical specialist Kyle Miller. “That’s not the name of the product, which is Honor or Insignia. Certainly that’s a good thing, even if that does not accurately describe the products.

Booth visitors last year in Orlando might remember the test tubes highlighting root length of plants treated with Honor Intrinsic or Insignia SC Intrinsic fungicides compared with untreated plants. This year, the company had a full presentation that highlighted the benefits of both products, including time-lapsed photography detailing the products’ affect on root growth.

“We have a lot of history with Insignia. We’ve been looking at it since 2000 in the crop business where it is known as Headline,” Miller said.

“I never saw a big visual difference above ground. We’re promoting this as having plant health benefits and I just didn’t see it. . . . I have to admit, I was not a believer at first. When we started taking root cores, that’s when we saw the difference.”

With the active ingredient pyraclostrobin, Insignia Intrinsic SC’s plant health benefits were discovered unintentionally when a spray tech at FarmLinks in Alabama was unable to complete spraying a fairway for a fungicide trial. Researchers there noticed a visual difference in turf quality between the treated and untreated areas on the fairway. Additional bentgrass trials at Clemson University showed that it also helped produce a stronger, deeper and healthier root system.

Honor Intrinsic (pyraclostrobin plus boscalid) also can help turf develop stronger and deeper root systems, according to studies at the University of Georgia that showed turf treated with Honor Intrinsic had a deeper root mass than untreated areas.

BASF’s Intrinsic line products are the only ones that actually include the term “plant health” on the label, Miller said.

“And our legal department,” he said, “insisted on seeing every piece of data.”

BASF also has recently launched its Turf Disease Control app, giving superintendents immediate access to free, comprehensive disease control program recommendations specific to Northeast, Midwest, Transition and Southern regions and turf types.

In addition to helping superintendents control known diseases, the app helps predict diseases based on the time of year or, in the case of the Southern region, based on soil temperature. It then recommends fungicide applications, timing and rates from Miller and Kathie Kalmowitz, Ph.D., the BASF Professional Turf & Ornamentals Technical Specialists who developed the disease programs.

Click here to watch a YouTube tutorial on how to access the app for your smart phone.

Attendees of past Golf Industry Shows might remember Bigfoot helping the folks at the Valent Professional Products booth promote the benefits of the company’s Tourney fungicide.

Even without Bigfoot, the focus in the Valent booth was on the toughness of its Tourney fungicide.

Well, there was no large, hairy beast roaming the show floor this year, but that didn’t stop Valent from continuing to focus on the expanded benefits of Tourney that have been realized during the past couple of years.

With the active ingredient metconazole, Tourney was launched late in 2008. The company relaunched it at GIS San Diego in 2010 after results of a field study and extensive demo program showed the product not only was effective at controlling diseases such as anthracnose, brown patch and dollar spot, but also resulted, in some instances, in improved turf quality as well.

For those who might not remember, Valent launched a demo program in 2009 in which superintendents at 955 courses were given samples of Tourney for use on a variety of turfgrasses. According to Valent, 90 percent of the courses on which Tourney was used experienced heightened turf quality as well as increased resistance to turf pathogens, including anthracnose, brown patch, dollar spot, fairy ring, necrotic ring spot, snow mold, summer patch and more.

FMC Professional Solutions focused on a new twist to an old name at the Golf Industry Show.

Talstar XTRA GC is a greens grad, sand core granular insecticide features a new active ingredient in a familiar name.

With the active ingredient zeta-cypermethrin, Talstar XTRA GC is labeled for use on greens, tees, fairways and roughs for control of a variety of insect pests, including ants, cutworms, webworms, armyworms, mole crickets and more. The new formulation can eliminate an entire fire ant colony in a matter of 15 minutes, not days, the company says.

The new formulation disrupts the pest’s central nervous system and offers residual control of up to four months.

Civitas has been a product on the move since first appearing (at least in name) at the 2008 GIS in Orlando.

New this year was the introduction of Civitas One, which is a pigment-added version of Civitas that combines the fertilization and fungicidal properties of Civitas with a turf colorant to enhance the playability and aesthetics of golf course turf.

Approved by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency last month, Civitas One offers a harmonizer and synthetic isoparaffin in a premixed formulation for use on greens and tees.

The formulation also has been submitted to the Organic Material Review Institute for OMRI status.

Originally formulated for use on cool-season turf, Civitas is a petroleum bi-product that has been shown in university research trials to trigger a plant’s natural defense mechanisms against a variety of fungal and insect pests.

The company announced at GIS 2011 in Orlando that Civitas had been approved for use on warm-season turf.