There are a lot of new herbicides, insecticides, and even fungicides available for 2008. I
can’t go through all of them here, but I’ll share our thoughts on some of the most interesting
new products.

HUSKIE – This is a new broadleaf herbicide for wheat made by Bayer. It is similar to Callisto
in terms of weeds controlled, soil residual, and the fact that it turns weeds white (it’s
a pigment inhibitor). I feel the advantages of it over the products in wheat today are that it
has excellent crop safety, it mixes with grass herbicides better than most other products (we
still like to see grass herbicides sprayed separately for better control, but tankmixing can be
done), and it is a different mode of action than other wheat herbicides. The weaknesses, in
my opinion, are it’s not great on wild buckwheat and thistles, supply will be tight this year,
and the cost is more than products like 2,4-D or Wolfpack. I am fairly excited overall about
this product, and with high-priced wheat, there’s no need to use products like 2,4-D that can
slightly to moderately damage the wheat when crop-safe options like WideMatch and Huskie
are available.

LAUDIS – Almost identical to Callisto and Impact, this broadleaf herbicide for corn probably
kills a little more grass than Callisto, but other than that, I don’t see much difference. The
rate is the same as Callisto, and I expect the price to be the same, too. It is made by Bayer.

AUTHORITY MTZ – This combination of Authority and Sencor will be labeled for soybeans.
It’s made by FMC. Authority has always had great residual (maybe too much), so using
a little lower rate in this combo is OK. Sencor is far better at controlling wild buckwheat,
marestail, cocklebur, and sunfl ower, so putting it with Authority should be a good thing. It’s
relatively inexpensive, too.

LEVERAGE and ENDIGO – Similar products, Leverage is made by Bayer and Endigo by Syngenta. Leverage is Gaucho and Baythroid together. Endigo is Cruiser and Warrior. These will be labeled post-emerge for crops like soybeans. The companies feel that because Gaucho and Cruiser are systemic and have long residual, they make a great complement to products like Baythroid and Warrior that have good contact activity, but are not systemic and have less residual. In soybeans, the companies feel that an application of Leverage or Endigo with your last application of Roundup could potentially give 45 days residual on soybean aphids…we’ll see about that this summer. Also, none of these products stops spider mites, so Lorsban may still be needed late in the summer anyway.

ROUNDUP POWERMAX – A new version of Roundup almost identical to WeatherMAX, with the same Roundup Rewards as Roundup OriginalMAX.

SURESTART – A combination of Surpass and Hornet from Dow. They have a reduced rate of each product in this mix for an economical start in Roundup Ready Corn.