# Northeast Mauget.



## treeman82 (Jan 16, 2002)

Hey everyone. Just in case you are interested there is supposed to be a guy coming to UMASS on 4/2/02 to give a talk on the Mauget tree injection stuff. I know that I am going to attend if at all possible.


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## ArborView (Jan 17, 2002)

I went to this a few years ago at UMass. It was a joke in my opinion. The guy that comes in is one of the salespeople for the Northeast area. He gives a little talk on how to use the stuff and then you take a simple written test to get a certification. He basically gives you all the answers (because he want's to sell more product.) Then you get something in the mail saying you passed. You still can't buy Mauget pesticides unless you have a state pesticide license, but it allows you to buy the fertilizers. It just seemed like a big sales pitch to me.


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## Toddppm (Jan 17, 2002)

> _Originally posted by ArborView _
> *. It just seemed like a big sales pitch to me. *


???? , well I'll probably go anyway to check it out, they're going to be right down the st. from me on 2-12. $45 to go though! I've heard the guy that is speaking here before at a couple different seminars , he's pretty good and has an awesome business, we'll see.


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## Reed (Feb 6, 2002)

*Sales, not truth*

Worked a bit three years ago with Mauget - designed (no easy task) a study to use microinject loaded with the trialzole family of fungistat - an attempt to combine a nutritional "rescue" while treating the vascular inhibiting fungi C. fagacearum (oak wilt). It would've been a blue ribbon for the industry as well as the epidemic most states are now experiencing.

The "Tree doctor", owner of the micro technology and licensee of this fungicide was contacted many times to assist in this study, the potential (and hoped for) results could have revolutionized the treatment protocols for wilt, as the conventional (and protected) programs are failing. He was however, the classical businessman - wanted contract to bind highest profits, was unwilling to submit assistance to study design, could not answer technical inquiries (as owner of the technology, he is sadly void of science backing it), and violated several federal restrictions in use advocacy and protective measures. 

The capsules originally provided were leaking - were half empty, and labels and concentration missing from the data. The experiment couldn't be launched until controls were cleaner. His reply was...."send me money up front" all the while no participants were compensated and countless questions went unanswered. He obviously was not interested in furthering the cause, but his salesmen are quick to anecdotally provide amazing and magical data and pictures of the success of micro injection of insecticides, fungicides, and nutrients.

$45 for a sales seminar? No thanks. Nor do I feel our trees here in the South need any additional American-style get rich quick schemes without exhaustive and verifiable proof. Mauget is nothing but a pyramid sales venture, not too far off the Amway line of thinking.

Respectfully,
oakwilt


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## Toddppm (Feb 19, 2002)

Oh well I missed it, had to be on the job that day.


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## Reed (Feb 19, 2002)

*oh well, no big loss.*

Think of it this way - yer $45 (or whatever they charge now) richer.

If you have any problems or questions relating to nutritional deficiencies, infestations, or bacterial/fungal infections just post here - there are hundreds of resources available as close as your local feed store and cost pennies to the dollars being wanted so badly by hi-tech delivery systems. 

Every single trunk of tested or dead trees that had pressure injection or even micro-injection using natural translocating whether it be for 'vitamin' or antibiotics or pesticides of one nature or the other have been vivisected and shown to sustain damage to vascular tissue at and around the injection ports. Impairing xylem tissues when trying to "help" a tree is counterproductive, especially when a tree exhibiting symptoms of impairment - is walking a tight rope to begin with. 

I'm reminded of the t.v. ads that promote to a patient - not a doctor - the virtues of drugs like prozac that make social presssures and anxieties go away. Pressures and anxieties that may well begin with social and economic ills, not physical maladies. Mauget reminds me just such a PR tactic. 

Base-line nutrients, specifically composting elements and hard-core intervention to soil pH like sulfur or foliar applications of bicarbonate are just some examples of treatments that provide non-invasive methods to address most of the classic pathological symptoms indicating severe distress. Soap and water with a touch of phosphorous and honey will both restore chlorotic conditions from the ground up and impair most insect cycles whether it be gypsy moth or long-horned asian beatles, if treatment is issued at the correct time. 

Here in Texas the early attempts to address Ceratocystis fagacearum (oak wilt) were so far off base that the disease itself soon adapted to chemical attempts to suppress it, leading to mutations that allowed wilt to become the most costly hardwood epidemic in forest history - first thing they did in their ivy-league wisdom was to misdiagnose the problem because someone years ago published wilt as dying from temperature extremes we have in Texas, but no one ever thought to gauge the heat index inside the xylem, underneath the bark on the north side of these live oaks. They also only sampled and isolated fungal cultures from deadwood, long after the pathogen moved on. 

The short story here is don't trust the advice from the experts - being in this case people who never leave the lab. WE may be a bit corn-pone ourselves but we seem to like getting dirty and seeing first hand what really happens out there in the woods. 

Copperous (ferrous sulfate) is around $15 per ton and is loaded with macro-micro elements and minerals, nickle, slow iron, molybdenum, copper, etc. Get a fifty lb. sack sometime and spread 20lbs around the dripline of a cholrotic tree, wait a season and take a look six months later - up - where trees speak the loudest.


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## John Paul Sanborn (Feb 19, 2002)

I am always loath to drill into trees for treatment methods. There are people in this area doing macrofusion on crabapple for scab!

But some pathogens do need root flair injections. Arbotech is one product I have seen very good results with DED, sycamore anthacnose, and have been told it works on wilt in the white oak group.

I would much rather do a soil injection whenever possible.

Distain for the "college boys" is just as bad as them dismissing us field practicioners as beer drinking monkeys.


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## Toddppm (Feb 19, 2002)

I was mainly interested in just hearing their sales pitch and finding out some more info on diseases in the area because I've heard the guy speak before. I've used the stuff before a few times and it just doesn't seem right to drill into the tree to me, but I guess it might have it's uses somewhere. Many more different seminars coming up soon anyhow , unreal how many different ones are popping up in the last year or so , good for us!


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## Reed (Feb 20, 2002)

*Mauget*

Well, have to admit I love climbing, bananas, and beer!

Arbotect has shown statistically acceptable results in DED however it's design as a fungistat (not fungicide) is to inhibit sexual reproduction of the fungi, meaning after time the disease will resume it's cycle necessitating repeat injections - that's where we get in trouble - three treatments mean a chemical "girdling" at the root flair because tissue is burnt either side of each port site and movement of the holes into live tissue (needed for uptake) will kill more vascular cells.

There is a licensed avirulent gene therapy (immune stimulant) out of the University of Toronto for DED that uses a modified disease gene marker that exercises the tree's recognition of pathogen threat to promote enzyme activity and increase tylosis response (compartmentalization) to vascular parasites. Whether it's use for wilt has generated any positive data yet I don't know but sure would like to try - elm trials so far indicate this is the silver bullet everyone's been hoping for. 

One thing that I strongly worry about is toxicity not only to the tree in sterol-inhibiting fingicides (Alamo, Arbotect, etc.) but to the operator - the poor soul doing the mixing and injecting. MSDS warnings and label notices do not tell all - the salesmen sure won't either. I heard over and over that the experimental broad-leaf killers we used in silviculture for the USFS were "safe enough to drink" years ago and stage 4 nonHodgkin's lymphoma was the result so please be extra extra cautious. Treat the chemicals as if they are highly radioactive because the actions on genes from these compounds are very similar, they are designed to be mutagens. 

There are instances where perhaps an injection is a proper call, I agree. I work primarily with forest diseases, spreading epidemics so approaching these is slightly different than tree by tree treatments on someone's front lawn. What I do like to show often however is that there are countless methods beyond the bells and whistles of high-tech remedies that have been in use for generations of experience. WE seem to have forgotten many of these and the textbooks sure seem to promote something we can buy, something that works so well in-vitro and theory but may not be the best cure in the field. 

Okay, better go and pop open a beer. Snap, phfist..........ahhh.


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## John Paul Sanborn (Feb 20, 2002)

I've read manufactorer reports on the toronto product. Are there any pear reveiw papers on it?


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## Reed (Feb 21, 2002)

*ElmGuard info -*

JPS,

I'm a bit surprized at the reluctance to share data on ElmGuard - there were three institutions (2 foreign) doing replicate tests but so far I've been unable to snoop my way in and find out some early reports.

One response I got from an inquiry was "It's bad business to share proprietary knowledge". Well no ????, but I told the guy that if we can't read the data then we'll disregard any positive reports. We got into a verbal barnyard boxing match.

I'm getting so sick of the global market mentality - money money greed and more money. 

What this is beginning to look like (although I am very familar with gene expressions and immune system stimulation) is that the U of Toronto applied for and recieved a use patent and is holding on for investors - to hell with a "better way" to do good for disease epidemics. I was aware of their early work on DED and had high hopes for wilt in relation to it. Just because some institution is holding out for the big bucks won't make me settle for next best - immunotherapy saved my life once and our field trials with wilt stimulating a management response in the host still convinces me there are better ways to treat infection than chemotherapy. 

The website for ELmGuard looks like McDonald's for burgers or Nike for tennis sneakers - it's glossy and stupid and sadly void of descriptive abstract and content. Then again, I guess Rainbow Tree Care's site for ALAMO is no different. Oh well.

I'm still snooping though, when I get something back on EG, I'll post it pronto.

RH


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