FOXTROT EW Give wild oats the boot

Foxtrot EW

Herbicide

•Approved in wheat and barley

• Efficacy on both tame and wild oats

Getting more from your crop protection to maximise returns

With a busy spring workload on the cards, incorporating an adjuvant in with T0 and T1 sprays could help optimise the e ciency and e ectiveness of the whole tank mix, according to Stuart Sutherland, technical manager at Interagro.

Despite the March cold spell, many crops are full of promise following the kind winter and forward crops may be awaiting their rst PGR, says Mr Sutherland. That said, a spring weed tidy up, and early nutrition and fungicide application might also be on the cards, making for some potentially complicated mixes that could jeopardise crop safety and e cacy at the start of the season.

“The problem is, sprayer operators will be mixing products in very cold water, as well as hard water, both of which make the mixing process trickier. With products added via the induction hopper individually, you might not even know you’ve got a mixing problem until you get blocked nozzles. Only products fully dissolved can be taken up by plants.”

A simple solution is to incorporate an adjuvant into the tank before adding crop protection products, and Mr Sutherland says Interagro’s Kantor could o er growers a number of bene ts this spring.

“Kantor is a unique adjuvant that emulsi es all components of a tankmix, so they homogenise more easily and remain thermodynamically stable even in cold water.”

As well as improving compatibility, Mr Sutherland claims that Kantor is the only adjuvant to bene t the full mixing and spraying process end-to-end, meaning that all products in the tank will bene t from drift reduction, improved spreading/retention and uptake into the leaf.

Thinking ahead to the coming weeks, Mr Sutherland notes: “It’s important to remember that curative activity for current fungicides is not as good as it used to be, so protectants should be applied in good time, before infection starts, with optimal coverage on target leaves.

“This is where Kantor will help provide the most secure form of protection because it reduces surface tension on the leaf so spray droplets can spread out and be retained properly across the whole area. As protectants can’t move on the leaf, they will only protect the parts of the leaf the spray covers. Coverage of contact herbicides in the tank will also be improved on target weeds.”

As well as cold water being likely to cause mixing challenges, it can also cause hardened cell walls in plants, so early growth regulation and weed control could be reduced if cold weather remains at the time of application, warns Mr Sutherland.

“This is another area where Kantor can help aid uptake, but in a safer way than many alternatives,” he explains. “It works by increasing the packing density of active ingredients at the cuticle, which increases di usion into the leaf, compared with most adjuvants which only disrupt the cuticle wax.” FG