Strengthen cereal disease control with Kantor
With increasing disease resistance putting pressure on the performance of single site fungicide actives, multi-site fungicide Arizona (500g/l folpet) + adjuvant Kantor will be two vital additions to disease control programmes next spring in order to protect crops and chemistry.
That’s the latest recommendation from Stuart Sutherland, technical manager at Nichino UK who states that with the loss of chlorothalonil, fungicide programmes in 2021 will need to be even more robust to ensure the long term protection of single site fungicides. Multi-site fungicide folpet will be a crucial resistance management tool also adding improved disease control, whilst the addition of adjuvant Kantor T0-T3 offers the best and simplest approach to help optimise fungicide placement and uptake, which are all too often compromised by challenging application conditions in the spring.
“Keeping disease out of the crop not only relies on fungicides with good potency and persistence, it also relies on good coverage to ensure the whole crop is fully protected. When it comes to protectant fungicide activity, full coverage across the leaf/ear is vital because protectants have no mobility and therefore offer zero protection to the parts of the leaf/ear not covered,” adds Stuart.
“Achieving adequate fungicide coverage can be difficult to achieve – the fungicide spray can drift off course and whilst growers have the option to use low drift nozzles, they do result in larger droplets which reduce coverage. It’s a problem for even the best fungicides because applying a spray solution to a leaf or the ear, results in high surface tension – crop leaves have a protective waxy cuticle which reduces the ability of the spray solution to spread out and be retained on the leaf. Ears of cereal crops are difficult to coat.”
“Adding Kantor, where the dose applied takes into account the water volume being used, not only reduces drift, it also lowers surface tension in the most effective way, enabling the components of the spray solution to spread out and be retained on the leaf/ear for optimum coverage and protection.”
“Preventing exposure of crops to disease not only requires accurate fungicide application, it also requires accurate timing as well to adequately protect the top 3 leaves and ear. The drift reducing benefits of Kantor are useful in this respect, but of equal benefit is the ability of Kantor to help increase fungicide uptake. With the curative activity of fungicides not what it used to be, getting the fungicide into the leaf as quickly as possible is vital. Kantor helps to increase fungicide uptake and can therefore be particularly useful if growers do get caught out”, says Stuart.
2020 field trials once again have shown a useful and sometimes significant improvement in disease control, late green leaf area and yield benefits. Look out for our updates in January for more information on this.