No-Tillers now have a new option when it comes to making effective, economical corn-herbicide decisions. Option corn herbicide, from Aventis CropScience, recently received U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) registration and was registered in nearly all corn-producing states earlier this spring.

 

Option is a post-emergence, sulfonylurea (SU) herbicide that controls grasses such as Johnsongrass, foxtails, fall panicum, quackgrass, shattercane, wooly cupgrass, wirestem muhly, barnyardgrass and wild proso millet. The herbicide also controls broadleaf weeds such as velvetleaf, pigweed and nightshade and provides suppression of sunflower, cocklebur, lambsquarter, giant and common ragweed, as well as perennial broadleaves.

 

Jerry Doll, weed scientist at the University of Wisconsin, conducted field trials to test the efficacy of Option applied to traditional fields and no-till corn ground.

 

“Option did an excellent job of controlling quackgrass in our no-till trial at the Arlington, Wis., research station,” he says.

 

Option was applied to V-3 stage corn, or between 4 and 6 inches tall. The quackgrass was 8 to 18 inches tall, with 90 percent of the grasses at the 3- to 6-leaf stage. While Doll says Option provided excellent control of quackgrass during the season, the best part was that it was effective in reducing the stand of this tough-to-control perennial weed the following season.

 

George Evans, general manager at the Weakley Farmers Cooperative in Martin, Tenn., works with a large percentage of no-till ground, and he observed Option in experimental use plots last year.

“From what I’ve seen in the test…