Adding a tank-mix partner to your pre-seed application protects yield. And there are long-term benefits to using a tank-mix partner, particularly when it comes to fighting the development of weed resistance.
Yield-loss can occur very early in the season if weeds are left to compete with the crop through the critical weed-free period. It’s important to seed the crop into a clean seedbed but it’s also just as important to keep a field clean through the early growth stages of the crop.
Adding a tank-mix partner to glyphosate allows you to protect the crop early and then rely on extended control to protect your crop further into the season.
Glyphosate is a contact herbicide with no soil residual activity. Any weeds that haven’t emerged will not be controlled with glyphosate alone. You need a product with extended control, such as Authority® Supreme herbicide, to extend protection. The extended control of flushing weeds takes the pressure of your in-crop herbicide application.
An effective tank-mix partner added to glyphosate can also deliver faster and a more complete burnoff. For instance, Aim® EC herbicide offers a low-use rate with fast-acting activity. Weeds show signs of desiccation within a few hours of application and quickly become necrotic and die. And then they stay dead. It’s the perfect partner for glyphosate.
Multiple groups control a broader spectrum of weeds
Adding an extended control product in a tank-mix with glyphosate in a pre-seed application is particularly effective at reducing populations of yield-robbing weeds such as cleavers, kochia, round-leaved mallow, stinkweed, volunteer canola, and many others. Cleavers are especially tough to control since they have multiple flushes throughout the growing season. Glyphosate can control emerged cleavers but it needs help for that second and third flush.
Reduce the development of herbicide-resistant weeds
Weed spectrum and performance isn’t the only reason to tank-mix with glyphosate. By adding other herbicide groups to the tank you’re also significantly reducing the development of herbicide-resistant weeds.
Tank-mixing multiple modes of action is widely considered to be an important tool to help delay herbicide resistance. Adding a herbicide from a different group reduces the selection pressure for glyphosate-resistant weeds. Choose a tank-mix partner that provides overlapping weed control and that will also control other problem weeds like volunteer glyphosate-tolerant canola.
Adding a tank-mix partner with glyphosate also allows growers to practice herbicide layering. Herbicide layering is the practice of using multiple herbicide groups and active ingredients, at different application timings, to control the same resistance-prone weeds.
In practice, herbicide layering means starting with a pre-seed herbicide application that includes both a burnoff and extended weed control product. The burnoff product controls the emerged weeds, while the residual activity of the other herbicide product keeps weeds from germinating during the vital early weeks of crop development. Afterwards, a post-emergence application containing one or more herbicides with different modes of action can be used. In total, two, three, or even four unique modes can be more strategically applied throughout the season