Heavy rainfall this season has led to heavy weed pressure in fields around the Midwest, making overlapping residuals more important to protect next season’s crop. FMC Midwest Technical Lead Gail Stratman explains that a grower wants to maintain good and strong weed control to maximize yield potential in the corn crop. As you travel around the Midwest, says Stratman, with the conditions including heavy rains, there is a tremendous amount of weed pressure and there are late season weed escapes in a lot of fields. This causes problems for growers.
“What an overlapping residual program does is use a two-pronged approach,” says Stratman. “First you use an early season residual program to set up a foundation for good weed control. Then you turn around and in your post emergence program you want to include a residual again. That’s where the overlapping residual part comes.”
He noted that you want to add the second residual before the first one breaks, thus overlapping. FMC products that fit especially well in an overlap system are Anthem/Anthem Maxx and Solstice.
Second part of the two-prong approach comes with resistance management. One key component of this, says Stratman, is trying to keep weeds from becoming established. Growers are starting to see increasing resistance issues with herbicides. So if a grower doesn’t let weeds come up then he doesn’t have to rely on post emergence herbicides.
Learn more about residual programs by listening to Cindy Zimmerman’s interview with Gail Stratman here: Interview with Gail Stratman, FMC
