There are at least two reasons why having an added herbicide tolerance gene built-in to a soybean variety makes sense — one, to make up for early season non-competitiveness of the crop, and, two, because of the increasing risk of glyphosate-tolerant weeds. To that end, Monsanto recently rolled out its soybean XTend trait — dicamba tolerance on top of Roundup Ready 2 technology.
As Joe Vink, weed management technical lead for Monsanto Canada, explains in this video filmed at the recent Momentum Tour put on by Monsanto, dicamba takes care of those tough-to-kill or glyphosate resistant weeds, like kochia, wild buckwheat and smartweed species, within the XTend system. What’s more, the residual control of dicamba keeps fields clean while the soybean plants are at their smallest and least competitive.
While the trait is approved for use in Canada, final export destination approvals are not in place, however, so farmers looking to integrate XTend soybeans into their rotation will have to wait just a bit longer. In the meantime, Vink walks you through added features of the XTend system — from application speeds, nozzle requirements and more.
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