2020 Winter RVC Insights - Flipbook - Page 14
Improve Spray Performance
Discover the adjuvant that fits your business needs
Dustin Hoeft, Agronomy Business Manager
Matt Boeckmann, Crop Protection Execution Lead
Optimize the ROI of your spray investment by hitting your target the first time, every time.
Today’s farmers are constantly
adapting their management practices to combat pests and obtain the
maximum return from their fields. To
help farmers enhance their disease
and insect management programs,
adjuvants have taken the world of
agriculture by storm.
With the ever-complex trait options
in corn and soybeans also comes an
even more complex offering of adjuvants to go along with these herbicide tolerant crops. In soybeans
alone, there are a slew of varieties:
Xtend (dicamba and glyphosate tolerant), Enlist (2,4-D choline, glyphosate, glufosinate tolerant), and GTLL
(glyphosate and glufosinate tolerant) GT27 (HPPD and glyphosate)
just to name a few. So, with all these
options available on the market,
what can and should be used?
Gone are the days where adding
in AMS and crop oil is all one needs
when it comes to the addition of
an adjuvant. Although spray adjuvants themselves are not active in
controlling or killing pests, they do
modify the spray solution which
improves the ability of the pesticide
to penetrate, target, or protect the
crop to which it is applied. Among
the typical types of ingredients used
are surfactants, emulsifiers, oils,
and salts. Each of these ingredients
modifies the spray solution itself to
improve such properties as spreading, penetration, droplet size, and
other characteristics.
With a wide variety of products on
the market, selecting the right adjuvant and water conditioner is a critical part of a grower’s management
practice, especially as herbicide
tank mixes become more complex
in order to fight weed resistance. As
new and old chemistries are added
to the mix, adjuvant priorities shift.
Both Xtend and Enlist technologies
have very specific requirements that
must be followed in order to spray.
Because of these regulations, many
existing adjuvants cannot be used as
they were in the past.
A combination of drift reduction
agents (DRAs), water conditioners,
and crop oil enhance the performance in most complete manage-
ment programs. Products such as
DRAs are used in Xtend herbicide
mixes to control off-target drift.
Crop oil concentrates help improve
herbicide penetration into the leaf
surface, and water conditioners
enable more of the active ingredient
to become available for the weeds
to take up. Water conditioners soften
the water, buffer pH, and tie up minerals that can neutralize herbicide
active ingredients.
Herbicide manufacturers research
and develop adjuvants as formulation ingredients that are specific
to each product. These adjuvants
include emulsifiers, dispersants,
stabilizing agents, capitally agents,
anti-foam agents, spreader/stickers,
and others.
Optimize the ROI of your spray
investment by hitting your target the
first time, every time.
The River Valley Cooperative team
offers a line of adjuvants to help improve spray coverage, optimize spray
disposition, and reduce drift, so that
pesticides hit their intended target
the first time.
ADJUVANT
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