29 August 2022
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Potato hubs show range of new products, including multi-targeted herbicide.
THROUGHOUT July BASF opened field gates to its ‘Perfecting Potato Hubs’, giving growers and agronomists a chance to see the latest trials on new and existing products.
The new herbicide featured at the three sites in Angus, Suffolk and Staffordshire in the UK where its performance was assessed with, and against, a mixture of potential partner products, across a range of potato varieties.
The events also featured a seed and tuber treatment trial, where the manufacturer shared information around other new products coming to market including fungicides for early blight and late blight control and a biological wireworm control.
Scottish Agronomy’s Eric Anderson joined the BASF team to talk with visitors about trials work on virus control.
BASF Business Development Manage, Paul Goddard said: “The hubs are an important part of our collaborative initiative, ‘Perfecting Potatoes Together’, designed to bring together industry in sharing knowledge, experience, and insight in potato crop production. We were delighted to welcome so many growers and agronomists, alongside experts like Eric, and were able to contribute to discussions around the challenges they are facing.”
HERBICIDE TRIAL:
In Angus and Suffolk, growers and agronomists saw the product’s performance across 10 different varieties, demonstrating its crop safety and efficacy in different scenarios.
“It’s a new mode of action as a straight for potatoes,” said Paul. “It is proving to be effective against a wide range of broadleaved weeds such as cranesbill, shepherd’s purse, chickweed, mayweed and groundsel. It’s also demonstrating very useful control over annual meadow grass.”
“The active is taken up by the roots and, more importantly the shoots, making it a flexible systemic herbicide that is particularly useful when conditions are dry.”
Paul describes the herbicide as a ‘team player’, enhancing the activity of partner products. At the hubs, the product was trialled alone and in tank-mixes with Stomp Aqua, Emerger, Praxim, metribuzin and Defy.
“With the restricted use of flufenacet on certain varieties, by being tied to metribuzin, and the useful range of weeds controlled, it could fill an important gap in herbicide programmes,” he said.
For more information on the hubs, see the next issue of Potato Review. If you don't already receive a copy, you can subscribe here.
