As the warm weather persists and spring-germinating wild oats just start to emerge in winter wheat, the adjuvant specialists Interagro wish to remind growers of the additional anti-drift properties of the methylated rapeseed oil adjuvant, Toil.
"The 95% methylated rape seed oil, Toil has been used for many years with spring-applied contact graminicides such as Topik, Cheetah Super and Triumph to control wild-oats in wheat. The addition of Toil adds to the effective performance and consistency of these herbicides by aiding spray deposition, improving adhesion to the weed target and improving penetration and uptake of the herbicide into the "difficult to wet" wild-oat plant," says Alan East, Technical Manager for Interagro UK Ltd.
"But recent work in France has clearly shown an additional benefit of Toil in reducing spray drift. A normal hydraulic nozzle produces spray droplets between 10-500?m with the median size being 220?m. If droplets are too small, they are carried by the wind and if too large, they fall vertically or bounce off the target. Any drift of spray droplets not only reduces the amount of chemical that reaches the target but can also cause contamination of non-target crops and organisms. The trials work showed that Toil considerably reduces the number of very fine droplets of less than 100? in size, resulting in lower drift", reports Alan.
He explains that the graminicides fenoxaprop-p-ethyl (Cheetah/Triumph) and clodinafop (Topik) were applied with a number of different adjuvants in two water volumes of 75 litres/ha and 150 l/ha and the spray droplet sizes monitored.
The development work demonstrated that when fenoxaprop-p was mixed with Toil, the percentage of droplets of less than 100 ?m was reduced to less than 8% at both water volumes. "For clodinafop with Toil, these small sized droplets were reduced down to 7.5% for the 75 l/ha water volume and 4.5% for the 150 l/ha. However when mineral oil treatments were used with Topik this resulted in 13.5% of driftable droplets at 75 l/ha of water and 10.2% at the higher water volumes, around twice as many as with Toil. Clearly Toil was outperforming a range of different adjuvants including terpenic alcohol, a paraffinic mineral oil and an alcohol ethoxylate at both water volumes and with both graminicides," says Mr. East
"Wild-oats are one of the most pernicious arable weeds, substantially reducing yields and quality. You only need 10 wild-oats per metre² to reduce wheat yields by 1 tonne per hectare. So you must make sure that you are getting the best from your wild-oat herbicide. But you also need to ensure that any pesticide is minimised in the environment. Toil will improve pesticide efficacy, reduce chemical wastage and minimises environmental impact at the same time," says Alan.
Toil also satisfies many safety criteria itself as it is safe to the environment and rapidly biodegraded. It is non-toxic to fish, CHIP3 compliant with no LERAPS restriction and is fully supported by a crop residue package.
