AgWired

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There’s been a lot of stampeding and kicking it up on the dance floor here in Ft. Worth this week during the IFAJ Congress and Ag Media Summit. And one company that is really kicking it up is BASF with their new product Kixor. Kixor is currently under development and is being designed for broadleaf weed control. Once it is perfected and available for producers, farmers will able to apply the herbicide prior to crop emergence for burndown or for season-long residual broadleaf control.

To learn more, I spent a little time at the campfire with Dan Westberg, Technical Services Manager for BASF.

“Kixor herbicide technology is a unique chemistry that is specifically designed by BASF to solve the toughest broadleaf weed control problems facing growers today,” explained Westberg. “If you look across the board there are a little over 70 broadleaf weed species. Many of those are resistance or hard to control.”

When the technology comes to market, it will have a wide range of crops it can be used on including corn, sorghum, soybean, wheat, all of the cereals, cotton, follow, treat fruit, and more.

One of the best attributes of Kixor will be the short amount of time for it to take effect – three to five days.

“Kixor herbicide technology will be very unique in that it has both burndown activity and also soil residual activity. So, depending on which crop it will have a very effective burndown and for some crops we can provide a very effective residual effect especially corn,” said Westberg.

IFAJ/AMS 2009 Photo Album

You can listen to my full interview with Dan Westberg here:

AgWired coverage of IFAJ 2009 is sponsored by:
and

Small grain farmers and agricultural researchers were taken by surprise this year due to a huge outbreak of head scab. But many farmers were spared to much damage through the application of various fungicide products including those who used Caramba. Caramba is a fungicide developed by BASF and now for the first time this year available to producers and its benefit is to increase yield protection and reductions of DON levels in grain.

Dr. Gary M Fellows was able to sit down with me during the Ag Media Summit and tell me more about Caramba and Twinline.

“Caramba is the number one product worldwide for the control for head scab in small grains, and we launched it this year which was a good thing because this was the worst year for head scab that we’ve seen in the past 25 years,” said Fellows.

In addition to Caramba, BASF also launched Twinline fungicide which uses the same active ingredient in Headline which is designed to control aggressive wheat diseases.

“The neat thing about Twinline is that its powered by Headline. What we’ve done is taken Headline and moved it up to the next level and that’s Twinline. And so we’ve actually increased it activity its given it a little longer in curative control as well as preventive control we’ve always had. In the trials that are starting to come off, the wheat harvest in the south is almost done, we’re seeing great yields in Twinline compared to all the other competitive products and compared to untreated.”

Although Twinline is only for small grains such as wheat they are working on a comparative product for corn but we’re going to have to wait to get the details.

We had several fellow journalists here at IFAJ and Ag Media Summit from Australia with us and they are not expecting a great wheat harvest. However, although not a record breaking year, the United States, says Fellows, should have a good harvest.

IFAJ/AMS 2009 Photo Album

You can listen to my full interview with Dr. Fellows here: