CONTROLLING WEEDS IN OILSEED RAPE

• Experts are predicting a 5 to 10% increase in the area of winter oilseed rape drilled this autumn.
• Oilseed rape continues to be a profitable crop, with very bullish prices, attractive contracts and high yield potentials leading to attractive gross margins.
• It is also a useful break crop with opportunities to control difficult grass-weeds in the rotation and to provide an excellent entry for first wheats.at will optimise yields.

Effective Control Of Grass-weeds + Volunteers Needed

• With tighter rotations and minimal time between harvest and drilling, cereal volunteers have become more of a problem. Black-grass dormancy was also short this year, leading to both grass-weeds and volunteers problem emerging together.
• Grass-weeds and volunteer cereals are very detrimental to the establishment and growth of winter oilseed rape. Independent trials show that over 80 cereal volunteers per metre squared can result in a 20% yield loss and just over 350 volunteers per metre squared can cause a 40% yield loss.
• An additional complication is the recently introduced PSD restriction on the use of graminicides. Only two ACCase herbicides can be applied to any one crop and these must be different active ingredients targeted at different weeds. With just one application being likely, this puts the pressure on to make sure that the treatment applied works to its maximum effect.
• Weed competition must be removed now with an effective graminicide plus either TOIL or ARMA.

Arma Enhances Falcon & Fusilade Max

ARMA is recommended with propaquizafop (Falcon), fluazifop-butyl (Fusilade Max) and other graminicides where a non-ionic wetter is normally used.
Trials work has shown excellent performance of ARMA and propaquizafop, improving speed of kill and final performance.

Volunteer Control - Falcon + Arma

Toil Enhances Laser & CoPilot

TOIL adds to the effective performance of cycloxydim (Laser) and quizalofop-p (CoPilot) and other graminicides where oil is recommended.
Even those graminicides with adjuvant incorporated in their formulation need additional help for maximum performance, when they are used at very low dose rates.

Assist Improves Water Quality

The water-conditioning agent, ASSIST, acts sacrificially to form irreversible complexes with the cations in the hard water. This means that all of the herbicide is fully available for weed control, resulting in a higher effective dose and better results. Positive results with many “dim” herbicides, such as Aramo (tepraloxydim), would be expected.