Some new herbicides received late Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) registration while other products were only test marketed in a few Midwestern states last year by manufacturers. As a result, there’s not a large number of new herbicides for controlling weeds in no-tilled corn this year.

Even so, attendees at this winter’s National No-Tillage Conference picked up many valuable weed-control ideas. At the mid-January St. Louis conference, the three speakers who tackled no-till corn weed control ideas were: Daren Bohannan, a technical service representative with Aventis CropScience in Athens, Ill.; Randy McElroy, agronomic research manager at Monsanto in Farina, Ill.; and Leon Hunter, a technical service representative for Syngenta Crop Protection in Belleville, Ill.

Pending Sale

The big news at Aventis CropScience is the pending sale of the firm’s ag chemical business to Bayer Crop Science. While the sale is expected to close later this year, both companies will market their own line of products independently during the coming cropping season.

Epic

One herbicide that’s already being sold jointly by both Bayer and Aventis is Epic, a combination of Balance and Define.

Balance Pro

Bohannan says Balance Pro is an excellent herbicide choice for no-tilled corn since it can be used in a burndown, recharge or residual style weed control program.

“It offers more weed control flexibility,” he says. “But when weeds grow taller than 5 or 6 inches, we recommend that you use it in combination with Roundup.”

Available as a liquid formulated herbicide, recommendations in Southern Illinois call for…