Playing With Fire
January 5, 2011 PhytoGen’s WideStrike seed varieties and Bayer CropScience’s Ignite herbicide chemistry have both enjoyed widespread popularity in recent years. In that sense, it seems inevitable that growers in the Mid-South and Southeast would try the products together.
Growers began using Ignite chemistry on PhytoGen’s WideStrike cotton varieties with some success in recent years, despite strong statements from both companies involved expressing their view that they did not support the practice. Because the practice was done with a degree of discretion, virtually no research was conducted on the matter. Fortunately for everyone involved, that has changed.
“There are people who have done work on this, and you will see their findings at winter meetings,” says Dr. Ken Smith, Professor of Weed Science at the University of Arkansas. Smith says weed experts like Dr. Larry Steckle and Dr. Jason Bond will present their findings on the practice at the Beltwide Cotton Conferences. Initial reports from their studies seem to imply that growers should be wary of the practice.
“If you spray (Ignite over WideStrike cotton) and it doesn’t work, then there is no one that is going to stand behind this program. Not LibertyLink, not Dow, not Bayer. You’re on your own if you decide to do this,” says Smith.
“I’ve walked those fields and many times it’s looked really good after spraying with Ignite, but many times they don’t look very good at all. We’ve seen over 200 pounds of yield loss on cotton that was sprayed with Ignite where that chemistry was never intended to be used.”
Many growers who use Ignite on WideStrike varieties do so after they discover they have glyphosate-resistant weeds, according to Smith. To combat this, growers will make an application of Ignite on weeds that, on occasion, have grown too big to be controlled by the chemistry. This creates a dangerous scenario which could possibly encourage weeds to develop resistance to gluphosonate, the key chemistry in Ignite. The end-result, according to Smith, would be disastrous.
“We will find out more at winter meetings. But we have a situation where a herbicide is being used on a lot of acres where it was never designed for that purpose, and you can’t expect to have the kind of control that you would if it were designed for that purpose,” says Smith.
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