Wheat School: Managing multiple products in the spray tank

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Is it safe for winter wheat growers to tank mix a herbicide, fungicide, and plant growth regulator in a spring application?

It’s a question Syngenta Canada agronomist Marijke Vanderlaan says she’s hearing more often from wheat growers as they look to make spring more efficient and actively manage the crop. And it’s likely a question that will continue to be asked in future growing seasons as more management options, including growth regulators, foliar fertilizers and biologicals, get added to the tank.

On this episode of the RealAgriculture Wheat School, we join Vanderlaan in a C&M Seeds field near Palmerston, Ont., where the seed company and Syngenta collaborated on a trial to assess the potential impact of adding multiple products to the tank.

The trial featured 11 treatments that were replicated four times. In the video, Vanderlaan looks at treatments that start with the untreated check and progress all the way to a five-way tank mix that includes a herbicide, fungicide, plant growth regulator, a biological and a foliar fertilizer. Each treatment was applied at 10 and 20 gallons to assess the impact of water volume.

Vanderlaan says one of the main concerns growers have when tank mixing products is the potential for phytotoxicity and its impact on the crop. Overall, there was very little phytotoxicity in the trial. The highest level observed was 1.8 percent in the five-way tank mix at the 10-gallon-per-acre water volume. She notes that impact was largely mitigated when the five-way mix was applied using the larger, 20-gallon volume.

Vanderlaan notes that this research includes only one year of data and more work needs to be done. But overall, in this trial there were no statistical differences in yield when the trials were harvested. Under good growing conditions at the time of application (15 degrees C) little to no crop response was observed from one-way to five-way tank mixes when applied using 20 gallons of water per acre.

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