BASF technical experts Luke Bozeman and Dr. Gary Fellows shared the latest in BASF crop solutions for southern growers at the Southern Ag Media Symposium last week at RTP headquarters.
Gary talked about BASF fungicides and how they can help combat disease problems in southern crops, like target spot in cotton which was just identified a few years ago in Georgia. “What we saw is that a Headline treated field in cotton was preventing that disease from getting started,” he said. “We may get as much as 200 pounds of lint cotton per acre increase in yield because we’re preventing that target spot from defoliating underneath the upper canopy.”
For peanuts, BASF offers VAULT plus INTEGRAL, which combines a rhizobial inoculant plus a biofungicide. “We actually have two different bacteria doing two different things, protecting it from disease but also helping the nitrogen fixation,” Gary explained.
Listen to or download my interview with Gary here: Interview with Gary Fellows, BASF
Herbicides are Luke’s specialty and the south could really be called the cradle of particularly glyphosate resistant weeds. “But resistance isn’t limited to glyphosate, there’s a lot of types of herbicides that have weeds resistant to them,” Luke stressed. “That’s why it’s important for growers to consider multiple types of herbicides so they can not select for resistance or exacerbate the problem.”
For southern growers, BASF introduced Zidua herbicide this year and in the pipeline is the advanced dicamba formulation Engenia, as well as a new herbicide tolerant technology for rice.
Listen to or download my interview with Luke here: Interview with Luke Bozeman, BASF