No-Tillers planning for the 2004 growing season can look forward to a handful of new alternatives for protecting their corn from weeds and insects. Herbicide and insecticide manufacturers and seed producers introduced their new products to attendees at the National No-Tillage Conference held in Des Moines, Iowa, in January.

Here’s a rundown of the new products, as well as some that received their first, limited exposure during 2003.

Syngenta Crop Protection

Syngenta is putting two new entries into the glyphosate herbicide market with Touchdown Total and Touchdown High Tech, building around the sales of the company’s existing glyphosate product, Touchdown IQ.

New Touchdown Total is potassium salt-based, fully loaded with adjuvants and is fully serviced after the sale, says Mike Leetch, a technical support representative for Syngenta.

Syngenta also expects to make Touchdown High Tech available early this year. The product contains no adjuvants. “You build in your own adjuvant system,” Leetch says. “It will be the lowest priced of the three Touchdown products.”

Along with the new glyphosate products, a new emphasis on glyphosate resistance management will be introduced by Syngenta, with a resistance management statement on all glyphosate products.

The majority of growers say they can control weeds with non-glyphosate herbicides in corn more easily than they can in soybeans, Leetch says. He adds, “We firmly believe that the best use of glyphosate on your farm is in the soybean crop. If we abuse glyphosate, we will have resistant weeds and we will be looking for some other…