Discussions Produce Theme: Stay Ahead
⋅ BY CASSIDY NEMEC ⋅
ASSOCIATE EDITOR
The beginning of the 2024 summer kicked off with a couple big field days around the Central and Upper Gulf Coast Texas regions.
Bayer In Needville
Bayer hosted its annual Needville, Texas, field day June 11 at Paul and Linda Freund Farms. The tour included stops at their Dekalb corn, Bayer herbicide chemistry, Dekalb grain sorghum and Deltapine cotton trials.
They highlighted their new corn VT4PRO technology, which includes the three above-ground modes of action — Cry1A.105, Cry2Ab2 and Vip3Aa20 — found in the Trecepta technology and adds in two below-ground modes of action including Cry3Bb1 and RNAi technology. “I call this Trecepta plus,” technical agronomist Scott Stanislav said.
Jeff Nunley, executive director for South Texas Cotton & Grain Association, emphasized the importance of making sure the voice of agriculture is heard when the comment periods open on the federal register.
“The dicamba label was vacated back in February, and we’re operating under an existing stock order today,” he said. “Basically, the stuff that is in the supply chain is all that’s available for use.”
Nunley said there were over 500 comments submitted on the 30-day dicamba open comment period that ended June 3. “We work pretty hard from our association’s standpoint on trying to encourage growers to submit comments. When you do those things, you don’t have to write a book — you could write two sentences as a farmer — that carries a lot of weight.”
He also discussed the potential challenge of not having a dicamba label for the 2025 season.
“One of my biggest concerns is if we don’t have a label yet next year and guys go off label with something else. I’m telling you guys, that is the biggest risk you could ever put our industry in because if that blows up on us, we may never get the label. There are alternate products out there you could use, but don’t go off label,” Nunley said.
BASF In Snook
The Texas A&M AgriLife Extension research farm on Highway 60 in Snook, Texas, was home to BASF’s innovation field day June 18.
Tour stops covered information on cotton weed control and tolerance with Axant Flex cotton and Liberty ULTRA herbicide, cotton variety trials, cotton and grain sorghum insect trials on thrips, aphids and fleahoppers, corn disease control and pecan programs and disease control.
The cotton weed control stop included discussion on the anticipated BASF launch of the Axant ISO herbicide, which is anticipated to be registered for use with the already utilized Axant Flex, quadruple-stacked, trait technology.
“It’s almost like a relaunch of isoxaflutole in this herbicide trait technology,” BASF technical service representative Adam Hixson said.
Scott Nolte, Texas A&M AgriLife associate professor and state Extension weed specialist, noted the extreme importance of incorporating a residual herbicide into your weed control program and staying ahead of the game when it comes to keeping up with requirements from the Environmental Protection Agency.
“We’re seeing what EPA has included in their work plan, things like we saw with Enlist One and Enlist Duo with the mitigation points table. That kind of thing is going to be implemented moving forward on all new products going through registration and reregistration in the future,” he said. “Incorporating a residual product into your program in a space where we are going to have fewer products available will be beneficial.”