Halex GT Is Solution For Farmers Using Two-Shot Glyphosate Treatments An Answer To Weeds
Halex GT Is Solution For Farmers Using Two-Shot Glyphosate Treatments
INA, ILL.
Weeds and ways to control them is a topic
well understood by Craig Abell, technical
service representative for Syngenta Crop
Protection, located near Champaign, Ill.
“Halex GT is one of Syngenta’s brand new
products, and it’s a glyphosate product that has
residual control,” he explained. “One of our
biggest challenges today in the Illinois and midwest
market is weeds that won’t die. So we have
waterhemp plants that won’t die with
glyphosate. We have a lot of glyphosate tolerant
(GT) corn out there so
we developed
Halex GT and it’s a
glyphosate product
that has residual control
and has three
modes of action. We
can go into fields
where the standard
glyphosate program
fails and we can use
Halex GT and we’ve
got three modes of action,
residual control,
good burn down and
residual weed control.
We can have a much
better program than
we can with the standard
glyphosate type
program.”
Actually, 2008 was
the launch year for
Halex GT. Syngenta
had some commercial
demos in 2007, tank
mix applications were put together, but this is
Syngenta’s first full year with the product.
“Out in the field, it looks phenomenal,” Abell
said. “In a lot of cases, the people who have
adopted this product are people that were trying
to use total post glyphosate and it just flat wasn’t
working. They were making two and three applications.
So we started them with a timely
application on two to four inch tall weeds with
Halex GT at 3.6 pints and they were getting very
good control.”
Halex GT works very well on two to four-inch
tall weeds, but will still control the larger weeds.
“We do not want to have irreversible damage
to the crop and we don’t want to suffer yield loss
that’s due to competition from the weeds,” he
said. “That’s the reason we want to be timely. We
don’t want the weeds to get tall and compete
with the crop, we want to be before that.”
Abell mentioned that weeds retard root growth
by competing for space below ground, just like
they compete for space and light above ground.
“They also compete for moisture, nitrogen,
potassium, phosphorus, all the things we have
to make grain, below ground,” he said. “Also, the
problem weeds are much more inefficient users
than a corn plant. So they’ll take nutrients up
two or three times faster than a corn plant will.”
Halex GT is not replacing any product, it’s just
adding to Syngenta’s arsenal of products.
“The optimum weed control, and where we’ve
always sold a lot of products like Lexar, is a
residual herbicide, preemergence and followed
by a post application of a product like Touchdown,”
Abell said. “That’s always going to give
you the best weed control. However, we developed
Halex GT for the person that was trying to
use total post glyphosate, and that hasn’t been
our number one recommendation. As a company,
we always want you to have a residual and
multiple modes of action. So we developed Halex
GT really for the customer we didn’t have. We’re
trying to help the guy that’s trying to use total
post glyphosate and is running into problems.
We developed it to fit that market.”
This was a market that Syngenta was not previously
addressing. The company’s number one
recommendation is to use Lexar followed by
Touchdown.
“That will always give the best results,” Abell
said.
Halex GT is for the producer who has been
putting a couple of shots of glyphosate out total
post, and usually having marginal results with
that.
In trials, Syngenta had side-by-side fields
where one side had a standard two-shot
glyphosate program and the other treated with
Halex GT. In some cases the first flush was
missed and the weeds kept growing. With the
second flush coming on the Halex GT side,
everything was killed, because there were three
modes of action along with residual effects.
“We’re going to take these to yield, and last
year where we did this we saw anywhere from a
seven to 10 bushel difference in yield between
two shots of total post and a Halex GT with
residual,” Abell said.
Halex GT can only be used on GT corn, regardless
of which company supplies the seed.
“It works on any brand of glyphosate tolerant
corn,” he said.
“The growers that tried it this past year that
still want to stay on their total post program, I
think they will widely adopt it for all their acres
as we go forward,” Abell said. “It’s more efficient
for them, they’re getting better weed control and
they’re managing resistance, so they’re killing
several birds with one stone by going this way.”
Δ
“Weeds that won’t die” is a topic discussed by Craig
Abell, Technical Service Representative for Syngenta
Crop Protection.
Photo by John LaRose