Forward Thinking Important For Weed Control

www.agrinews-pubs.com
Tom Doran
2010-05-04

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. — Developing strategies to stifle those stubborn weeds are essential to establishing an ideal seedbed.

“Let’s not feed the weeds” is a tagline Jeff Carpenter, DuPont Crop Protection corn herbicide portfolio manager, refers to when discussing the challenges of winter annuals can offer.

“The winter annuals are coming on strong — chick weed, henbit, dandelion, mare’s-tail, shepherd’s purse — there’s a whole bunch of them,” he said.

Carpenter and Susan Macy, DuPont’s soybean herbicide portfolio manager, offered their company’s recommendations for weed management. On the corn side, DuPont’s Prequel herbicide now is available as another piece of the arsenal.

“We’re excited about it. It offers burndown and residual control, and it is tailor-made for the conditions we have this year because it will do a nice job burning and controlling the winter annuals that are trying to come up now,” Carpenter said.

“It also provides nice residual control on what I consider to be tough-to-control broadleaf weeds that we’re experiencing in today’s corn production such as waterhemp, giant foxtail, giant weed, a cross spectrum of both grasses and broadleaf. Prequel does a nice job with a burndown and residual control of both.”

The new product offers multiple modes of action, as recommended by university researchers and agronomists.

“Prequel does that in a single package with a couple of different active ingredients to help control glyphosate resistant or tolerant weeds, as well as the ALS tolerant or resistant weeds,” Carpenter said.

“It is a pre-emerge product for burndown. The sooner you can put it on, the better. So use Prequel as the pre-emerge burndown and setup to get the corn off to a fast, clean start.”

A second product, Resolve Q, serves as a complement to glyphosate.

“Resolve Q added to the glyphosate also brings more burndown or contact residual control to that program,” Carpenter said.

“More importantly, it’s another mode of action to help complement and control the glyphosate-tolerant weeds and to get extended residual control until that corn can reach crop canopy timeframe. This would get both contact and residual activity for an extended period to carry you through until harvest.”

Carpenter said the late harvest and the resulting weed growth also necessitates residual control.

“The use of residual products is a key point. You can go out with a 2, 4-D and a glyphosate and burn things off, but they’re going to come right back, especially as long as it looks like this season could set up to be,” he said. “As many weeds as we had going into harvest last year and the extended to late harvest we had, we just had a tough year.

“All of that considered means to really do some management and have forward thinking about how to control weeds up front by utilizing residual products, doing multiple applications and using products that can bring those additional modes of action to our weed control programs.”

Establishing a healthy early stand is key to achieving optimum yield.

“There are tests that will show that if you can prevent those weeds from competing with the corn in season, you gain 12 to 14 bushels per acre where you’re using a residual and preventing weeds from ever becoming competitive with the corn crop,” Carpenter said.

“With the prices we’re paying for our technologies and our seed today, it’s an investment that will pay off. The yield is there. We’ve seen these tremendous yields in corn the last few years, so the genetics have come on.

“The weed control part of it is not the high priced compared to what the cost of the seed is these days. So it really does pay to do a proactive job and prevent weeds from ever competing with the corn.”

For soybeans, Macy recommends applying herbicides early so the field will be ready later.

“My recommendation to those that have soybeans is to put their pre-emergence product on now. That way they will have the burndown, and they will have the residual going on through harvest,” she said.

“They can spray their soybean acres and now and not have to worry about it until they want to plant. They can spray it and concentrate on the corn acres.

“Deal with their fertilizer, deal with their chemicals, deal with their planting, and they don’t have to worry about those soybean acres.”

DuPont’s Envive and Enlite herbicides both fit into Illinois and Indiana soybean crop protection. Enlite is recommended for soils with higher pH levels, many of which are in the northern parts of Illinois and Indiana.

“If they put their Envive or Enlite on now, they’ll burn down all those winter annuals and get their residual, so when they are ready to plant their soybeans they’re not dealing with a mess where they have to burn down and possibly wait,” Macy said.

“We have a great portfolio to really complement anyone who is has Roundup Ready soybean acres. And in their first glyphosate applications in-crop it’s going to be closer to canopy, if they have issues with weeds like morning-glories, lambsquarter, giant ragweed, mare’s-tail, they can add Syncrony in with their glyphosate.

“With Syncrony they’re getting what glyphosate does and added help for some of those weeds glyphosate might not be the strongest on.”

Macy predicts volunteer corn will be an issue this year due to the late harvest and more glyphosate-tolerant corn acres.

“They’re going to need some help besides just glyphosate in the tank to get the corn,” she said.

DuPont’s Assure II can be mixed with glyphosate for the post-application to help control the volunteer corn.

“They could do a glyphosate, Syncrony and Assure II tank-mix, and they’re getting it all,” Macy said. “So you’d have Envive or Enlite pre-emergence for burndown, and in crop they’re going to do a glyphosate, Syncrony and Assure II.”

Information on these products can be found on DuPont’s website or by contacting the local retailer.




Return to Article List