Dr. Dale demonstrates PBI-Gordon’s Atrimmec® Plant Growth Regulator

[SPONSORED CONTENT] Editor-in-Chief Seth Jones stops by the PBI-Gordon lab to meet with Dale Sanson, Ph.D., senior director of formulation development in compliance chemistry, to learn about Atrimmec® Plant Growth Regulator.

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Transcript

Seth Jones: Hey everybody, it’s Seth Jones, editor-in-chief of Golfdom magazine. I am back in the lab again. I’m at PBI Gordon, and I’m being joined by Dr. Dale Sanson, who is going to give us a tour. Dr Dale, great to see you again. Thanks for having me back up here again.

Dr. Dale Sanson: Thank you, Seth, always a pleasure!

Jones: Today, we’re going to talk about Atrimmec for my golf course superintendents. It’s a plant growth regulator. First, give me the basics on the product.

Dr. Dale: Atrimmec has been in our portfolio for a long time. We call it a legacy product. It’s a PGR. For those aren’t familiar with that, a PGR is a plant growth regulator. What it does? You go in, you trim your ornamentals, your bushes, trees. Then you apply Atrimmec. You get more longevity in between those trimming sessions, so you get more labor savings if you have folks coming in and doing the work for you. Water based product, as opposed to most PGRs on the market, which are oil based or solvent based, has little to no odor. So great for use around golf course areas that you may have people coming in entering you don’t have that off putting smell. Also great for control of nuisance fruit, if you look at the label, gives you the timing, proper timing and application for bark banding around trees, ornamentals also as a systemic so you can apply around the root zone, the active ingredient diagonal sodium can be taken up through into the root and slow down or suppress that nuisance fruit that may be coming on the cart way or just in the way of pedestrians.

Jones: Okay, so this is a little bit different for my guys, because it’s got nothing to do with with the grass or the fairways or anything. This is just for up around the clubhouse, correct? You got some trees. You got something that’s putting out fruit, and guys are driving over it and crushing you don’t want to see that. And you told me this, it’s easy tank mix. Can you talk to me about how this does in the tank?

Dr. Dale: Absolutely, I’m going to get this going here. I have a simulated spray tank and the proper order of addition if you’re going to add this in with a tank-mix partner, when you look at the product, I got a visual here. It’s a nice green, blue color, water base. You can see it flows very easily, not very viscous, not very thick. So it is a very good, easy to add tank mix partner. When you’re mixing together any product you need to follow, what’s called the WALES mixing order. If you look on online, most state extension centers will have that WALES methodology because of time. We’re not going to go into that, but we’re going to demonstrate the proper way at which you can add this together. The timing of athletics is such that it is ideal to mix with an insecticide. Typical pies that you may be used to synthetics, natural pies, other traditional synthetic insecticides can be mixed in with it. But what I want to do is I want to show you a challenging formula, you’re seeing more of these non traditional insecticides coming into the market. Formulated is WPS. Wettable powders, I talked about the whales method that W means WP or WDG needs to be added first. So what we’re going to do is simulate a spray tank here, I’m going to turn up my agitation. We’re going to add the wettable powder. So this is the non traditional insecticide. We’re going to add that in there, in the WALES mixing order that “A” means agitation. So you begin to increase your agitation, as you can see, that’s coming down through the water column. It’s mixing very nicely while that’s mixing, one thing I want to do is to talk about an SDS. The SDS is a very valuable document in terms of the physical, chemical properties of your tank mix partners. If you’re deciding that you’re wanting to mix things together in a spray tank, definitely look at Section nine. Look at the pH. If the pH between those two tank mix partners is beyond two. You may not want to think about adding these together. Chemically, you may have some issues. Physically, you may have some issues. So ultimately, use that SDS as a very valuable document in which you can judge whether you’re going down the right way. So I said WALES, the wettable powder is added, I’ve increased my agitation, “A”. “L” would be liquids that would be suspension concentrates. We don’t have any suspension concentrates here. “E”, would be emulsifiable concentrates. Don’t have any of those here. So the last thing is, “S”, this is a soluble concentrate. So we’re going to add the Atrimmec into the tank mix. And as you can see, Seth, the formula is nice, clear, slight green goes in, well into the spray tank. The last thing we want to add is a surfactant. You don’t have to add a surfactant, but with plant growth regulators. Especially with Atrimmec on bark banding, a silicone based surfactant is a must. So we’re going to add that in these are very efficient. You won’t need much in the spray tank. Add according to label, you can see everything is nicely integrating. And there you go. You’ve got a key to success. Your whole day is planned,

Jones: And it still smells great in here.

Dr. Dale: Smells great!

Jones: It does. So what did the superintendent say about the results they get with this? Why do they like it?

Dr. Dale: Oh, they love it because, again, it saves labor. Like I said, go to our website. You can easily see what you’re saying in terms of manpower. Easy mixability, the fact that they can mix it up in the morning, go out and spray it. And if they don’t get it all applied that day, the formula is still good for the next day, so you don’t have chemical degradation. You can use it for a two day time period, no clogging of screens, sprayers. It’s ideal for what you would need for plant growth regulator applications.

Jones: Okay well, Dr Dale, Thanks for walking me through. It’s good to see you.

Dr. Dale: Absolutely! Thank you.

Jones: All right. Thank you, everybody. Dr. Dale Sanson, I’m Seth Jones. Thanks for watching us here at the PBI Gordon laboratory on Golfdom TV!