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The NDSU Extension weekly podcast In the Pod: Soybean Updates delivers timely insights and expert advice on soybean production.
You're listening to In The Pod, Soybean Updates, a weekly trek into the latest soybean information from NDSU Extension. It may feel premature, but it's time to think about early season weed control in soybean. Joe Ikley, NDSU Extension weed specialist, has the details. Joe, what do we need to think about when it comes to early season weed control in soybean?
Joe Ikley:Yes. So the main things with weed control in the early part of the growing season is really going to be making sure we get our residual herbicides on before crop emergence. Particularly in soybeans, some of our best herbicides from a residual weed control standpoint cannot be applied after crop emerges. So these are some of our group 14 herbicides like Spartan, active ingredient is all phentrazone. Valor, the active ingredient is flumioxazin. So some of these need to go on before soybean emerges. So no matter what your system is, we wanna make sure we get that residual herbicide on to get us some good weed control into the first couple weeks of the season.
Bruce Sundeen:So speaking of systems, what if you have conventional tilling?
Joe Ikley:Right. And before we even really focus on that residual herbicide, we wanna start clean. So whatever weeds have emerged before planting, we wanted to get them taken care of. So in a conventional till system, some of our main things we discuss are we wanna make sure that the soil is fit when we till it, and we use a cultivating device that actually turns the soil over and kills those weeds. So some of our high speed discs may not be the best for killing weeds. They may prepare the soil well for other activities. But if we have a lot of weeds out there, we wanna make sure we kill those weeds. Other things to pay attention to, we wanna make sure that we're not working the field too wet. From a weed control perspective, that means incomplete weed control. And what we can see when we work and get these big clods of dirt is that some of these weeds will live on these clods of dirt. So we will still have these weeds living and be much bigger than our crop is by the time the crop does emerge.
Bruce Sundeen:And what about no till?
Joe Ikley:So no till, it's all about that burndown herbicide application. So, hopefully, we would have done something in the fall, some residual herbicide in the fall to kind of thin the herd of kochia that's gonna be coming up. So kosher is one of our driver weed from a burndown application standpoint. So we wanna make sure we optimize that sprayer to get good coverage and control those weeds because kosher will come up in these dense mats, and coverage can be a quite a big issue there. So making sure we get the sprayer optimized and making sure we are using effective active ingredients. I think we've done a pretty good job letting people know about our group 14 resistance in Kochia. That's kind of a game changer from a burn down perspective, ahead of many crops, including soybean. And so making sure we're utilizing the herbicides that we can kill kosher with ahead of planting our soybeans.
Bruce Sundeen:Joe, how does Syngenta's announcement about dropping Gramoxone affect no till?
Joe Ikley:Yeah. So this was a big announcement about a month ago that Syngenta will discontinue selling Gramoxone after this year. So what this means from our earn down perspective this year should have plenty of supply in the marketplace. As we get later into the season and we start thinking about some desiccation or preharvest treatments, really keeping an eye on where the supply is of Gramoxone. And there are plenty of generics on the market, so Paraquat is the active ingredient. So at least this year, we we think we're set on supply of whether it's the straight Gramoxone product or the generic versions. Going into the 2027 season, pay close attention to announcements over the course of that winter because losing Gramoxone means we need to keep an eye on the generic active ingredients in the marketplace. So maybe a little bit more difficult to get supply, but we're not really aware at this time how that's gonna shake out next year. So we should be set for this year, but just kinda know that this will change pretty quickly in the future.
Bruce Sundeen:Thanks, Joe. Our guest has been Joe Ikley, NDSU Extension weed specialist. You're listening to In The Pod, Soybean Updates, a weekly trek into the latest soybean information from NDSU Extension supported by the North Dakota Soybean Council.