AgroPages-Demand for Gowan’s herbicide Avadex led to applicators investment-Agricultural news

Contractors and machinery manufacturers are responding to the move in the market towards Gowan’s herbicide Avadex Excel 15G (tri-allate) as part of a weed control programme and are making the necessary investments to satisfy this demand.

Avadex fulfils a key role in the control of difficult-to-control grass-weeds such as black-grass, annual meadow-grass and wild-oats as well as some common broad-leaved weeds including cleavers, charlock, chickweed, mayweeds and poppy.

Contractor Richard Lapage of R&H Contract Services, based in Framlingham, says there is a huge demand for this herbicide this year from both growers and agronomists. “Not just for black-grass but also for wild-oats and other grass-weeds. I have repeat customers who say they have hundreds, not tens, of hectares to control this year. For the first time this spring we were also asked to apply Avadex Granules to spring barley and sugar beet,” he continued.

In response to high grower demand, Richard Lapage and his business partner Jonathan Tunmore have invested over £50,000 in a Mercedes Benz Forward Control Unimog.

Richard and Jonathan hope to apply 5000 hectares of Avadex Granules this autumn, which is well up on previous years.

“We are supplying many more smaller, light weight systems, the TMA4, to growers who want to apply Avadex Granules themselves. In fact we planned to build 20 applicators and nearly half of them were sold before we even advertised the product! Certainly the demand for this herbicide and hence applicators and contracting services is very much higher this year,” says Joe.

Dr. Dominic Lamb of Gowan reports that there is already an unprecedented high demand for the use of the residual herbicide Avadex this autumn. “Many more growers want to use it as the essential starting point of their herbicide programme.”

“In the last couple of years many farmers have used a contractor or have invested in their own applicators to apply Avadex Granules, as they are keen to integrate this valuable active ingredient into their weed control programme in winter and spring crops,” he says.

Dominic says that Avadex is an essential part of any weed control programme and is best positioned as the starter herbicide. “Applied pre-emergence at a dose rate of 15 kgs/ha to well-prepared moist seedbeds, Avadex de-waxes and sensitises black-grass and other weeds, boosting the overall efficacy of the herbicide programme. It can then be followed by a flufenacet-containing herbicide such as Crystal (flufenacet + pendimethalin). Tri-allate is known to work in a different way to most other cereal graminicides and is once again finding a key position in many weed control programmes, its robust performance proven with over 50 years of use in the UK.”