Just because herbicide-tolerant crops now dominate the majority of acres in the Midwest does not mean that crop protection manufacturers are bowing out of the new herbicides race. In fact, many are adapting their portfolios to the way that growers prefer to control weeds today, particularly in corn.

The percentage of acres containing either Roundup Ready or LibertyLink corn have grown from about 30 percent in 2005 to nearly 60 percent in 2007. Some projections show that herbicide-tolerant corn could make up better than 70 percent of the corn acres in 2008.

With more broadleaf weeds showing either tolerance or resistance to glyphosate, manufacturers are seizing the opportunity to introduce new herbicides that are designed to help growers improve their weed control where glyphosate may have weaknesses.

Here’s a look at some of the new products entering the corn market in 2008, as well as a summary of other new crop protection products entering the Corn Belt.

Halex GT Herbicide

A premix of mesotrione, the active ingredient in Callisto herbicide; metolachlor; and glyphosate, Halex GT is designed for post applications with Agrisure GT and Roundup Ready hybrids. It’s developed to clean up weeds present in the field at application and keep fields weed-free until crop canopy.

Syngenta developed Halex GT with the intention of providing herbicide-tolerant corn growers a one-pass weed control product with residual activity to help control tough broadleaves like ragweed, waterhemp, lambsquarters and pigweeds and grasses like foxtails. It controls weed species that exhibit tolerance or resistance…