Despite a lack of new herbicides coming on the market this year for no-till soybean weed control, attendees at the 10th annual National No-Tillage Conference still picked up a number of valuable weed-control ideas.

At the conference, speakers who tackled weed-control ideas in no-tilled soybeans were:

• Dan Schroeder, agronomic research manager for Monsanto in Glen Carbon, Ill.
• Bob Kacvinsky, technical service representative for Syngenta Crop Protection in Lincoln, Neb.
• In addition, Bill Striegel of Aventis CropScience in Normal, Ill., told attendees that the sale of the firm’s ag chemical business to Bayer Crop Science will lead to a number of new soybean herbicides being available by next year.

Roundup Ready Technology

While Roundup Ready soybeans have been used on more than 200 million acres since 1996, Schroeder says Monsanto has overcome earlier yield issues in northern climates and improved the glyphosate product. While the product has an excellent safety record and the economics have been favorable, there are now a number of copy-cat glyphosate products.

Schroeder says Roundup UltraMAX features TranSorb technology that delivers fast intake, improved translocation and superior rainfastness. Proven over variable weather conditions with thousands of hybrids and varieties, the technology is based on a unique surfactant system.

“We have done a great deal of work over the years on surfactants to get the glyphosate into the plant more efficiently,” says Schroeder. “We’ve looked at more than 4,000 surfactants with most weed species and we’ve settled on this as the best one.

“This surfactant system results in…