Cost-effective, efficacious, flexible weed control unlocking cereal yield potential
Progressive farmers are boosting cereal yield by combining CALLISTO® pre-emergent herbicide with precision fertiliser strategies. This approach frees up precious time, allowing farmers to focus on targeted nutrition management through variable rate fertilser application. So good are the results with CALLISTO®, these precision ag farmers are able to delay costly post-em sprays to focus on strong returns through urea application.
“CALLISTO® is a management strategy for us,” Trav Hair, of Crop Opti, in Horsham, Victoria said.
“We want guys to have more time to get more things done, especially around urea application.
“There's more money in spreading urea than in spraying chemicals (and) with CALLISTO® there isn’t any need to come back and spray weeds because they are just not there.”
Servicing the Wimmera and Mallee regions of Victoria, Trav said his clients were in the business of “growing yield”.
“We’re going out with nitrogen a lot earlier,” he said.
“We want to be turning around, unhooking a seeder and hooking on a spreader, not operating a spray boom.”
The region is quite diverse, with many farmers dedicating 30 per cent of their crop to lentils each season in rotation with canola and cereals.
“Annual ryegrass is our major challenge although some of the broadleaf weeds are becoming a bigger issue,” Trav said.
Pre-emergent herbicides play a major role in weed control in the early stages of the crop and getting a tank mix to address the weed issues and the crop rotations can be challenging.
“We're trying to find that nice fit with a lot of these products to control weeds early,” Trav said.
“Finding those right products early in these mixes is super important, we’ve been using CALLISTO® with grass herbicides such as BOXER GOLD® and Sakura*.
CALLISTO® fits well in tank mixes for comprehensive early weed control under dry conditions. “A lot of guys sow dry, not ideal for a knock-down (but) we want to control all these weeds early. A good pre-em strategy going into cropping is really important to allow us to continue through.
“CALLISTO® is one we've been using a lot lately for the control of broadleaf weeds in cereals, and it's doing a really good job. In addition, CALLISTO® offers a unique mode of action for broadleaf control in cereals “It is a Group 27 (H)… many growers haven’t been using that group as a pre or a post-em for many years.
“By throwing CALLISTO® in the mix, we’re seeing a much better job early in keeping crops clean.”
Trav said CALLISTO® is a standout.
“It’s the only product out there, at the moment, holding its own in that pre-em space when it comes to broadleaf control,” he said.
What’s more, CALLISTO® improves spray logistics by extending post-emergent window.
“It’s allowing our crops to get up and get going that little bit earlier. We're going to keep the weed bank down and by using CALLISTO® it's allowing guys that extra two or three weeks before they need to come back and do a post-em spray, which is what's making more growers more money.”
Given the popularity of lentils in the area, Trav notes there are issues with thistles and vetch. CALLISTO® controls a wide range of problematic weeds, including volunteers.
“Radish is popping up and a big one is a lot of the self-sown crops that are actually coming through. If we have a dry harvest, and then not much rain during summer CALLISTO® will control them early in the crop.
“That's a really good management strategy for us allowing our guys to do what they need to do going forward and not have to worry about all this volunteer stuff coming up.”
“Even if we don’t have the nasty weeds that CALLISTO® picks up but we’ve got volunteers, it's still a really good strategy.”
CALLISTO® improves yield potential by reducing early crop competition and soil water consumption.
“Having crops with less competition at the start, utilising less water, is really important. We're in an area this year where we didn't get a lot of rainfall, so we need to be preserving as much of this rainfall as we can.”
The soil type in the region goes from lighter to black, self-mulching country and CALLISTO® has a rate range from 100 to 200 mL/ha. This provides the flexibility to growers to tailor the rates for different paddock situations (various soil type or weed species/density) across wheat and barley, as well as oats and triticale.
“If we’re going from a canola crop into a wheat crop, we’re always going to run with 200 mL because that's going to be adequate to do that job for a period of time,” Trav said.
“We might run a bit less from time to time depending on the weed burden and that’s where CALLISTO® has really good flexibility.”
The economics also put growers in front with CALLISTO® as the robust cost-effective weed control solution.
“At that 100 mL rate you're about $8 a hectare,” he said.
“It's really a no brainer to be able to keep your crop clean early for $10 and it potentially might take you from using a really expensive in-crop, post-emergent spray, to something much cheaper.”
Click here to find out more about CALLISTO® or reach out to your local Syngenta representative.
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