Sumitomo Chemical launches Sumizyn T-Max^®, Excalia Max^® for wheat in Argentina

With 30% progress being made in planting at a country level and 9% of the total area in the southeast of Buenos Aires haven been utilized, Argentina’s wheat planting is advancing rapidly. The longest cycles have almost been entirely used up, so we now decided to plant intermediate and short cycles. Regarding the latter, when phenological times are short and everything happens very quickly, making good prior decisions is extremely important to crop production and profitability.

Starting with ensuring that sowing happens in the best possible way, the history of the lot must be considered, along with previous experience and future plans, and it is key, although not usually enough, to guarantee sowing in a clean lot without weeds that consume water and nutrients and compete for light with the crop. This issue is magnified when fertilizer costs and weather forecasts are not ideal. Starting from a good seedbed free of weeds, we must maximize the potential of a well-established crop. Of course, it will also depend on the quality of sowing, variety, quality of seeds, and so on. It is important to analyze the seeds to be sown, as well as the types and magnitude of pathogens, to defining the sanitary treatment of the seeds to be used.

Returning to fallow lands, and for those experiencing difficult conditions between the start of the soybean or corn harvest and the beginning of the planting of fine, there is a tool featuring Japanese technology that enables the close control of crops.

It is the herbicide, Sumizyn^®, a product based on flumioxazin (50%) and owned by Sumitomo Chemical, which has a wide spectrum of action when applied on cruciferous plants and on other types of species that usually appear during the autumn-winter campaign. This year, Sumitomo Chemical added Sumizyn^® T-Max to its portfolio, which is made up of flumioxazin 3.8% and terbuthylazine 50%. The incorporation of terbuthylazine offers a very flexible tool, which can be used not only on wheat but also on soybeans and corn during pre-sowing, with a broad spectrum of control.

In recent years, along with the rise in wheat planting, the complexity of weed management has also increased. To resistant grasses with long histories and wide territorial ranges, such as Ryegrass, different species of crucifers in the center-south of Buenos Aires, Rama negra in the south of Santa Fe resistant to ALS herbicides, and resistant thistle in the southeast of Cordoba.

The outcome of this trend is that traditional treatments are no longer sufficient to control an increasingly broad spectrum of resistant or tolerant species. Therefore, the integration of herbicides with different modes of action and other methods of use can be tools that help achieve the goal of creating a clean lot and ensure more long-term sustainable management, therefore, avoiding over-taxing the system and the possibility of encouraging new resistance or tolerance to various active ingredients.

″Flumioxazin is an excellent alternative, as it helps in rotating active ingredients and offers considerably residual action during the pre-emergent control of broadleaf weeds, such as cruciferous (Brassica rapa, nabon), Rama negra and Ryegrass.″ In combination with terbuthylazine, it broadens the spectrum of control of other difficult grasses, such as Eleusine indica, Chloris elata and Digitaria sanguinalis, which have also become difficult to control in recent years.

These treatments enable us to ensure that no weeds are present until tillering, when, if necessary, the treatment can be complemented with the application of post-emergent herbicides, such as MCPA or its combination with Mextrol^®, or in the case of Ryegrass, the use of a specific graminicide, such as Gyzmo^®, all if which are products from the Sumitomo Chemical company line.

The company also offers other herbicide products for wheat, such as Azbany Maxx (fluroxypyr 48%), Kamba Full, and the only dicamba (88%) on the market that combines two high-quality salts (monomethylamine + dimethylamine) in its Dual Salt Technology^® formulation with very low volatility. Sumitomo Chemical has two formulations out of 2-4 on the market, the well-known Weedar Full^® featuring the Dual Salt Technology^® of the highest quality and performance. This year, we are launching a new formulation based on 2,4-D ethylhexyl 89%, Weedar Xil^®, formulated as an emulsifiable concentrate that, due to its low volatility, has no restrictions on its use, unlike butyl and isobutyl ester.

When defining fertilization strategy, we must think about the crop destination and whether we aim for yield, quality (protein) and response of varieties, and so on. Today, it is a key to achieve our objective, but the timing and source and form of application will ensure the efficiency of applied resources. Do not stop paying attention to other nutrients and micronutrients, such as Zn, which has become deficient in various areas and batches. Sampling in advance is key to gaining prior information.

With disease management, batches must be monitored early, so pay attention and when in doubt, send tissue samples to the plant pathology laboratory for analysis. Avoid confusing physiological symptoms with stains, as this misdiagnosis can lead to the early application of fungicides that is then ″discovered″ when the action of the fungicide is required because the pressure of stains or rusts is really present.

At Sumitomo Chemical, we offer various tools for disease management. This year, we carried out the pre-commercial launch of Excalia Max^®, a new fungicide composed of a carboxamide mixed with a triazole, and is uniquely based on a molecule discovered by Sumitomo Chemical that is completely new to the market, Indiflin^®.

Although the mode of action of carboxamides is widely known and understood in the field, the value that this new molecule adds and its main differentiator in terms of what is known today is its outstanding performance in controlling rusts both in wheat and in soybeans. Not only can it be used in the future for foliar applications, but it is also being developed for use in seed treatment and on other crops. In several trials held to evaluate the technology, we witnessed excellent outcomes in  terms of control at over 90%, as well as a marked response in terms of yield ranging from 500 kg to more than 900 kg compared to the control.

(Editing by Leonardo Gottems, reporter for AgroPages)