Better Farming – September 2016

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18 Farm News First > Better Farming September 2016
“We’ve got resistant weeds, but
Xtend fields are clean and they look
wonderful,” Harry says. “There will be
some good genetics and great yields
coming to growers with these new
traits.”
If there’s a silver lining to 2016’s
midsummer drought, it’s that
research plots looking at drought
tolerance traits will have some decent
material to work with. Freitag says the
Monsanto team is conducting
multi-hybrid research in corn, among
other programs.
Martin Harry, a board member of Soy Canada, says growers are speaking
enthusiastically about new products to control glyphosate-resistant
weeds in soybeans.
“We’ve got a small research planter
that is capable of planting multiple
hybrids in a field in a single pass,” Fre-
itag says. “It has been pretty exciting
for us to see those plants come out of
the ground and the different respons-
es to products in the different zones
in the field under the drought. It’s
letting us combine a lot of the
individual hybrid positioning and
data we have, and actually apply it in
the field. The data we get from this
year’s research programs will give us a
pretty neat story to tell on our
research come fall and winter.”
Faust too, says drought data will be
useful. She says dry conditions provide
a good opportunity to characterize
up-and-coming hybrids and obtain
scores on drought tolerance.
“At Pioneer we have a set of hybrids
that have improved performance in
water-limited conditions. We’re seeing
those products handle drought
conditions better so we’ll be looking at
data going into the fall,” Faust says.
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