Features Herbicides Seed & Chemical
INDUSTRY NEWS: March 2007

Just prior to spring, Top Crop Manager contacts agricultural
suppliers for information on new pesticide registrations and other news. New
products offer opportunities for pest control. But remember, many other well-proven
products are still on the market. Registration status may change between press-time
and season of use. Top Crop Manager advises producers to check
labels and provincial pest control manuals carefully.

Herbicides
Bromotril is a new entry in the bromoxynil market. It is a Group 6 product from
United Agri Products, like others (e.g. Pardner, Koril) registered to control
broadleaf weeds in wheat, barley, corn, oats and bromoxynil tolerant canola.

Two new major herbicide products have been recently introduced for weed control
in corn. Impact from BASF and Option 1.2.3 from Bayer CropScience. Readers will
find full reports on these products elsewhere in this issue of Top Crop Manager
(see Another corn herbicide active, page 64, and A new 'one-pass'
corn herbicide for Ontario, page 8).

Seed corn producers may now use PEAK Plus from Syngenta Crop Protection as
a post-emergence broadleaf weed control under a Minor Use permit. It can be
applied once per growing season between the two to seven leaf stages.

There are additions to the Callisto label, says Syngenta Crop Protection. It
can now be tank-mixed with Primextra II Magnum as well as Dual II Magnum plus
Aatrex on seed corn and sweet corn.

The PMRA has approved L1700 as a deposition aid and drift reduction agent for
use with glyphosate in Canada. This marks the culmination of 10 years of research
and development on the benefits of this exceptional chemistry, says United Agri
Products.

L1700 was first introduced to the Canadian market as a penetrating surfactant
and a pH reducer. With advances in herbicide tolerant crops and pre-seed burndown,
spray drift of glyphosate has become an issue. This new registration will allow
growers to use L1700 to reduce the risk of spray drift by modifying the spray
droplet size and by reducing the number of small droplets that are prone to
drifting off-target.

L1700's formulation reduces the number of fine droplets without increasing
the number of very large droplets in the spray pattern: large droplets tend
to hit the target plant and bounce or slide off onto the soil surface. By increasing
the number of droplets in the medium size range, the risk of spray drift is
reduced and more of the herbicide is deposited on the leaf surface to control
the weeds that are being targetted.

Fungicides
Stratego is a new fungicide from Bayer CropScience for use in wheat, barley
and oats. It has two modes of action: propiconazole (Group 3) and trifloxystrobin
(Group 1) to control net blotch, powdery mildew, tan spot, leaf and stem stripe
and crown rusts, scald and septoria on barley, oats and wheat. The company says
Stratego may also be tank-mixed with some herbicides for canopy disinfection.

The 3/4 rate of Folicur has been submitted for registration. Bayer CropScience
expects this to be approved before the growing season.

BASF has expanded its disease management offerings with metconazole, one of
the triazole family of fungicides, for protective and curative treatment of
foliar diseases in cereals, corn, soybeans and sugar beets. Submission to Canadian
regulatory authorities will be made in 2007, says BASF.