As cotton moves into defoliation, spray timing becomes critical and conditions don’t always cooperate. Cooler mornings, shorter spray windows and dense canopies can all influence performance at this key stage.
Defoliant’s active ingredients must penetrate the leaf for the products to work as expected, which makes droplet retention, canopy penetration and leaf coverage essential.
Coarser droplets can help reach deeper into the canopy. Once on the leaf surface, the active needs to spread and move through the cuticle, which can become harder to penetrate as temperatures cool. This is where a quality adjuvant plays an important role.
Parachute® paraffinic spray oil supports cotton defoliant performance by:
- Increasing droplet retention
- Dramatically improving leaf coverage through hyper-spreading and rapidly incorporating the active into the cuticle, enabling movement to the epidermal cells beneath
In the video below, six 2% emulsion droplets of conventional oil (left) and Parachute® (right) were applied to a cotton leaf. After 15 minutes, Parachute® has spread markedly further. By 30 minutes, droplets are fully incorporated into the cuticle – supporting faster uptake of the defoliant active.
When spray windows are tight, make every pass count.
Learn more about Parachute® as a cotton defoliant adjuvant and how it can support your program:
https://ag.fmc.com/au/en/products/oils-adjuvants/parachute-paraffinic-spray-oil
