Edward McNab

Email: 
emcnab@uoguelph.ca
Office: 
E.C. Bovey Building
Lab: 
Dr. Tom Hsiang

Project Description:

Dollar spot, caused by Clarireedia jacksonii, is one of the most common and costly diseases of turfgrass in North America. A combination of cultural and chemical controls is often used to achieve the high level of turf health and appearance demanded by the turf industry. In areas of intensive turfgrass management, such as on golf courses and lawn bowling lanes, approximately 60-70% of the pest management budget is spent each year on deterrence of common turf diseases, such as anthracnose, snow molds, and dollar spot.

Remediation of resistant population is a lengthy and often expensive process. Current methods involve traditionally sensitive populations to outcompete resistant ones. However, this can take months or years to accomplish and for golf courses this is not an option in the lack of fungicides. A key step to preventing resistance development is to identify resistant populations quickly and adjust control methods accordingly. At this time, identification of resistant biotypes requires sample collection and submission to a lab for culturing and can take several weeks or months to obtain results. A field assay for turf managers to assess C. jacksonii resistance onsite would be invaluable in saving turf managers time and money on fungal pest control. A few field assays have been developed for detecting antibiotic resistant bacterial pathogens, but none have been developed for fungicide resistant fungal pathogens to date.

 

Presentations:

Canadian Phytopathological Society 2021 student oral presentation: Creeping bentgrass microbiome: traditional culturing and sequencing results compared to metagenomic techniques.

 

Awards:

Tri-Society Online Conference 2021: Canadian Phytopathological Society oral presentation award

 

Education:

University of Guelph

  • Honours Bachelors of Science: Biochemistry (September 2012 – April 2016)
  • Continuing education and academic upgrading (September 2019 – December 2019)
  • Master of Science candidate, School of Environmental sciences (September 2020 – Current)
    • Developing a field assay to identify DMI resistant biotypes of Clarireedia jackonii