Since herbicide-tolerant transgenic cotton varieties became widely available in 1997, the no-till cotton acreage has nearly doubled in the United States. A recent survey by the National Cotton Council indicates that no-till made up 29 percent of total cotton acres while reduced tillage made up 30 percent of all cotton acres in 2002.

A broad spectrum herbicide that effectively controls grasses such as foxtails, johnsongrass and shattercane in no-tilled corn was introduced just in time for the 2003 growing season by Bayer CropScience. Featuring recent U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) approval, the herbicide will control broadleaf weeds such as cocklebur, lambsquarters, morningglory, ragweed, sunflower and velvetleaf.

Many growers looking for a new way to provide both burndown and season-long weed control will soon have a new tool available in their herbicide arsenal. That’s because a compound named Expert from Syngenta Crop Protection was recently approved by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for use in corn and grain sorghum.

What started out as an experiment with no-till grain sorghum has led Benedict, Kan., farmer Jerry Guenther to national prominence as one of the country’s top-yielding grain sorghum producers.

If you have the feeling that fewer new herbicides are coming on the market these days, your thinking is right on the mark.

No-Till is not a machine, not a crop and not residue. Instead, no-till is a combination of all the critical things you need to produce the best crop with the least cost and the most sustainability. That’s been our farm goal for the past quarter-century.

With fewer new herbicides coming on the market each year, no-tillers are paying much closer attention to developing more effective weed-management plans. As a result, no-tillers are intently studying how various herbicide and tankmix combinations perform in their fields.

A strict no-till corn-and-soybean rotation leads you down a path to trouble. The more practical kind of diversity that you can work into your no-till system, the better.