McGregor director discusses new timothy fungicide

The McGregor Company has released a new fungicide product for timothy hay. Cat Salois, director of Research and Technology for McGregor, said the fungicide is the first one of its kind.

“There is a lot of alfalfa research out in the world,” Salois said. “There is very little timothy research. 2021 was the first year of release.”

The research and development of this new product has taken a relatively short time.

According to Salois, growing timothy is similar to growing cereals. When developing this product, previous research on cereals came into play.

“We took seven years of lessons learned,” Salois said. “There are different yield parameters. The same principles apply at a different angle.”

Being able to apply knowledge gained from growing cereals is helpful because the small amount of timothy grown compared to alfalfa. Because of the work and time needed to put into developing new chemicals, the small, niche crops don’t see a lot of research done to address their problems.

To help fill this void, the McGregor Company developed a 50-acre research plot five years ago in the Kittitas and Ellensburg area to study both timothy and alfalfa.

“We’ve been using it for forage research ever since,” Salois said.

The new fungicide product will work for disease control and plant health.

Salois is hoping it will allow farmers to get an extra year or two out of their timothy stands.

“We hope to get an extra year of a stand,” Salois said. “Research is ongoing. We hope to improve longevity. We’ve only had the tool a couple of years. In the short term, it is about disease compression and improving the quality of the bale.”