If you take the most damaging qualities a weed can have, and rolled them all together, what do you get? Yes: cleavers.
Every single cleaver plant causes damage, and it snowballs fast. Take it from Manitoba’s Ministry of Agriculture, which estimates that just 100 cleaver plants per square metre can reduce canola yields as much as 20%.
Unless you’re on top of this weed before your canola emerges, it’s game over. In fact, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada experts say that even one single cleaver plant in the pre-emergence period does the damage of 100 cleaver plants in your canola just three weeks later.
Yield losses take down profitability, of course, but cleavers hurt you in other ways too. If cleavers are allowed to survive past the pre-emergence stage, they’ll grow too big, too quickly for your in-crop herbicide to handle. Harvesting cleaver-choked canola is not how you want to end the growing season.
Cleavers have one more trick: resistance. Some biotypes are resistant to Group 2 and 4 herbicides, further restricting your control options.
That’s why canola growers like Command® Charge herbicide from FMC Canada.
This powerful, soil-applied herbicide delivers Group 13 and 14 action to take cleavers out early, while effectively managing resistance. Command® Charge herbicide offers an extensive broadleaf burnoff label – with extended activity on cleavers and chickweed -- in all herbicide-tolerant canola systems.