Recently, we heard from Jeff Mink, Technical Crop Manager for Syngenta Crop Protection in the Southern Field Crops Business Unit about resistant Palmer Pigweed, and other weeds that are showing resistance.
These weeds, especially Palmer Pigweed are beginning to make a prominent showing in the south and southeast. Mink says that in addition to rotating modes of action on herbicides, there’s several enhancements that can increase effectiveness:
“There’s several products out there than can be used pre-plant, and I’m talking cotton a lot, but this problem is also in soybeans, as well. And we like to rotate our chemistries there, and you’ve got a few more options there than you do in cotton. And then of course, in a real pigweed resistant area, it’s a good idea to rotate to corn because we’ve still got some very effective herbicides there you can use in the corn to help fight these resistant weeds.”
In addition to simple crop rotation to crops that still have several pigweed resistant traits, Mink says being successful is not just a crop approach:
“You really need to take a total farm approach and multi-year looking at crop rotations, and university research in Arkansas as well as in Georgia is showing that you can what they call mole-board plow, or deep tillage, if you turn the soil over, which gets away from the no-till situation, which I know there’s several advantages there, but, in some areas you have the option of using deep tillage, to turn the soil over and what that does is just bury the pigweed seed, and that’s been shown to be very effective as well.”
But, the key, according to Mink, is staying educated:
“This is an issue that’s going to require several different approaches. A grower just needs to stay educated and understand what he can do to battle this problem. Crop rotation, tillage practices, herbicide selection, all that becomes very important.”
Jeff Mink, Technical Crop Manager for Syngenta Crop Protection in the Southern Field Crops Business Unit.
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