0:05
Excellent.

0:05
Thank you very much, Jerry.

0:07
Hello, everybody.

0:08
Thanks for joining us.

0:11
Great to be here today.

0:11
So my goal here for the next 20 – 25 minutes is to share some of the the initial field observations here for this 2025 growing season and also share some of our research findings here from the past couple years that I think may be very helpful as we proceed here trying to manage our weeds here in this 2025 growing season.

0:36
So here’s kind of what was happening earlier this month.

0:41
We had tremendous planting conditions.

0:46
It was really dry, nice suitable soil conditions for planting.

0:50
You see the plants are going, but if you’re paying attention to this picture here, you’re going to see the topsoil is right and you’re going to see some dust moving right.

1:00
So what’s been happening here has been really, really, really windy the past couple weeks.

1:05
As a matter of fact, I have a couple visiting scholars from Brazil and they they were asking me whether the the winds here ever slowed down.

1:13
So it’s been quite challenging in that sense.

1:16
So some of the the main challenges we have had you know because of the wind that the planters are rolling, we’re trying to keep up with the planter, right, putting our pre-emergence herbicides down.

1:26
But finding those good windows for application has certainly been challenging.

1:31
The first one, the winds obviously they impact drift, right.

1:35
If we have windy conditions, we have drift and we don’t want that.

1:38
But the other thing is when we have this windy conditions that also impact the quality of our application.

1:44
If we want our pre emergent herbicides to deliver a good weed control, we need to have quality uniform applications and windy conditions certainly impact that.

1:55
Travelling across the state here, I’ve seen a lot of rigs travelling and my assumption is that a lot of those rigs had post emergence, you know, nozzles or nozzles that we would recommend for a post emergence application.

2:10
So one advice for folks out there when we have this windy springs, you know, trying to get our pres down to look into tips or or nozzles that will produce coarse, ultra coarse droplet size because that certainly helps us what, reduce drift, but also improve uniformity of our application.

2:29
So that’s one of the other challenges we had so far.

2:33
The second one is, as I said, perfect planting conditions.

2:36
Planters kept rolling here for about 10 days, right?

2:40
But the topsoil because of all the wind and then the warmer temperatures we’ve had has been really dry.

2:45
So we’re pretty much delivering residual herbicides to dry soil.

2:50
And when we’re delivering herbicides, you know residual herbicides to dry soils, they’re not in the top soil, they’re not available in soil solution.

2:59
Therefore they’re not controlling weeds quite yet.

3:03
So these are some of the pictures that we took this past week.

3:06
We were down at the Rock County farm, this particular field here, pictures were taken on May 14th.

3:12
The crop had been planted a week prior.

3:15
And throughout this fields here we had different pre emergent herbicides, OK.

3:20
But the challenge there is that the pres were sitting on the soil surface.

3:23
So no moisture since we planted and sprayed.

3:26
But if you look into the the soil profile a little bit below there, you know, inch and a half, there’s plenty of moisture and that’s where you’re seeing this giant ragweed coming from.

3:36
OK, so my main point here, if you already planted your crops, if you already sprayed your prees, go out there and scout to see what’s happening, especially in a few days from now that we finally got some consistent rainfall throughout the state.

3:49
Just to see what’s going on, just to see if your Prees are active, you know, timely active, evaded or not.

3:55
And if not, if you may need to come up with a Plan B for those fields.

4:01
OK, so this is something that we’ve learned over the past couple years here.

4:05
This kind of has become one of my recommendations if you would, and that’s based on multiple years of research that we have conducted.

4:14
So what we’re looking at here is the use of dicamba being added to application of pre emergent herbicides in our corn programs, OK.

4:25
So because we can no longer use dicamba in dicamba tolerant soybeans, but this is still possible here in corn, OK.

4:34
So from our research, what we have learned is that adding dicamba with the pre program can improve residual control for giant red weed and also other weeds, especially when a timely activating rainfall is unlikely.

4:48
OK, So what am I trying to say here?

4:51
I’m going to, you know, deploy my pre emergence application in my corn crop.

4:56
I’m looking at the forecast and I’m not seeing any rainfall in the next 7 days or so.

5:02
In that stage, I would certainly consider bringing dicamba into the tank as part of my pre emergence application because dicamba will kick in.

5:12
It’s a highly soluble herbicide, OK, so when it’s dry, it’s going to be sitting on the soil surface controlling weeds.

5:18
OK, So it’s controlling weeds until rainfall comes and then the other herbicides get activated and start doing their job.

5:26
OK, so here’s just some data supporting that from 2023, we had an early start of the growing season here in Janesville looking at giant ragweed control.

5:35
Dicamba by itself provided really good residual control up to 35 days.

5:40
I’m not saying go out there and use dicamba only as your pre, what I’m saying is, if it’s a dry spring dicamba can help your pre emergence corn herbicide program.

5:49
OK.

5:49
So the other example I’m going to use here is Harness Max plus atrazine by itself about 76% control 35 days after planting.

5:59
So that was the time we were going to be triggering our post application.

6:03
Whereas where we added dicamba to the same treatment, we were at 85% control.

6:07
And another similar situation here for Resicore. Resicore by itself 74% control, you add dicamba to Resicore, at that point we had 83% control, OK.

6:18
So dicamba has value in this dry springs.

6:25
The other thing I want to talk about now switching gears a little bit is waterhemp.

6:29
Waterhemp is actively germinating across the state right now with all this moisture here.

6:34
We’re going to see more coming up in the in the next days and weeks, OK.

6:40
But one thing that really surprised me is how early waterhemp started germinating and emerging this year.

6:45
OK, I’ve been here in Wisconsin for seven years.

6:49
This is the beginning of my 8th growing season here.

6:52
And the earliest I had seen waterhemp germinating in Wisconsin emerging was around the May 10th, OK, this year on April 30th, Nick Groth, he works with Syngenta.

7:03
He sent me those pictures, OK, of waterhemp germinating and emerging in black soils here in southern Wisconsin.

7:10
So that really blew my mind.

7:12
And an earlier this week, Josh Kamps with UW Extension, sent me these pictures here from a field by Janesville.

7:20
And what you see in there, not only the early planted soybean crop is up already, but look at the size of that waterhemp, OK?

7:28
So it’s just amazing how early you know, you know, this waterhemp has started to emerge and grow here this growing season.

7:36
So if you have fields with waterhemp, be mindful that the weed is up and going already.

7:42
OK, so this is the question that’s coming up a lot this time of the year.

7:48
Rodrigo, I planted my crops.

7:50
My crop just emerged and I haven’t had the opportunity to put a pre down.

7:55
What should I do? My recommendation?

7:57
I still go out there and put an early season residual herbicide program.

8:01
That’s definitely a recommendation that we have.

8:05
In corn, we have a lot of options and we have a lot more flexibility.

8:08
So for the short amount of time I have here today, I’m just going to be focusing on soybeans because once the soybean crop is up, the options are a lot more limited, OK?

8:18
And the options that provide residual control can be applied once the soybean crop is emerged are pretty much in this slide, OK.

8:26
So what my recommendation is and what we have done extensively in our trials in scenarios where we want to have flexibility of programs that we can spray right before the beans are up, but also after the beans are up and provide early season residual are these ones.

8:40
Here we like to do a three-way combo.

8:42
We like to put a group 14, a group 15 and a group 2.

8:46
And I’m going to explain the rationale there.

8:49
So as far as group 14 goes, the only option that’s left once the beans are up, that have residual soil activity here is Flexstar, OK, or Fomesafen.

9:00
So that has to be in the tank.

9:01
The the, the second option there or the second component of my program is going to be a Group 15, OK.

9:07
The Group 15 are very important for small seeded weeds such as waterhemp, but also for grasses, OK.

9:13
So for the Group fifteens, now we have 4 options, Zidua, Dual, Outlook and Warrant, and I list them here in order of performance based on our trials for waterhemp control and for grass control.

9:28
OK.

9:28
And then lastly, a lot of folks have gone away from ALS chemistry because water hemp is primarily resistant to Group 2 herbicides.

9:36
However, I want to make a case here that Group 2 herbicides still bring a lot of value, OK.

9:42
For instance, I’m going to look at Pursuit.

9:44
Pursuit provide excellent control of large seeded broadleaf weeds.

9:48
The same case is true for FirstRate, but pursuit also helps with grass control and that’s why I like this three-way mix here being quite flexible.

9:58
You can spray before the beans are up or also after the beans are up.

10:02
Now, if you’re looking at this picture and you’re scouting your fields and you may have some weeds that are up, you need to understand what you’re dealing with.

10:09
If it’s just grasses, if it’s just some like weeds that are not resistant to glyphosate, just simply adding glyphosate will do the trick.

10:16
Now, if you’re dealing with established waterhemp, that’s when you got to start being strategic and asking yourself, do I need to bring Enlist?

10:22
Do I need to bring Liberty as part of this program?

10:26
Having FlexStar will help with water hemp this size, OK.

10:30
But if that water hemp is getting a little more size to it, this is when you want to start making some of these considerations about whether you have to have Enlist for Liberty as part of the tank as well.

10:41
OK.

10:42
So with all that said, I want to switch gears here one more time and I want to talk about cover crops, OK?

10:48
And I’ve been very, very surprised, pleasantly surprised with our cover crops this year.

10:55
In the plots where we’ve had cover crops through early part of May, cover crops are growing nicely.

11:00
And because we have the cover crop in there is protecting the topsoil from all the wind, from all the evaporation.

11:06
So the cover crops actually have helped us retain topsoil moisture.

11:11
OK, up to now, now they’re head starting to head out.

11:13
Now they’re going to start using a lot of water.

11:15
But up to now they’re helping us with moisture management.

11:20
But this really surprised me.

11:21
OK, this is an experiment that’s being conducted by my PhD student, Guilherme Chudzik.

11:27
OK, Guilherme took some data with our crew last year last week at Janesville at the Rock County farm.

11:33
And what they were looking at is at the time of our serial rye cover crop termination and spraying our preemergent programs, we wanted to know what was the weed density present at that point?

11:44
OK, so they counted the No2 plots which are here.

11:49
You don’t see any green in there.

11:50
Those are no till plots.

11:51
And then in green is our cereal right cover crop.

11:53
They had about 3 foot tall.

11:56
OK, this is where we want to see the cover crop being OK.

11:59
So in our no till plots, we saw an average of 63 water hemp seedlings per square foot.

12:07
But where we had the cereal right cover crop in every four square foot, we saw one water hemp seedling.

12:13
So I’m talking about a 250 fold difference in water hemp density here at the time of planting.

12:20
OK.

12:20
So in a very challenging spring like this one for like spraying, for delivering our herbicides and because of timely rainfall for activation, these cover crops here are buying us time is reducing the amount of weeds that are germinating and establishing OK, but it’s also suppressing them, which is fantastic here.

12:40
So this really caught my attention.

12:42
Another benefit here, we’ve been documenting over the years and it was very, very clear from seeing this data, the benefit that the serial rye cover crop can have here in, in, in challenging years like this one.

12:56
OK.

12:56
But in order to get good biomass in the spring, we need to fine tune that cover crop management.

13:02
OK.

13:03
And here are pictures that I took at Arlington earlier this year.

13:06
So there’s two pictures I took on April 22.

13:10
OK, And what do I have in front of us here?

13:13
These are two separate plots.

13:15
They were planted with aroostock rye, 60 lbs of seeds per acre.

13:20
Both plots were drilled.

13:22
The difference is the planting time.

13:24
The last one was planted on September 20th and then the the right one was planted on October 20th.

13:30
OK, what is the message here?

13:32
The earlier we, I think it’s kind of common sense, right?

13:36
But once we have like some pictures and data like like this, it helps us validate it.

13:40
The earlier we can get the rye planted in the fall, the better off we’re going to be in the spring.

13:47
And when we have that early planting on the of the rye in the fall, that allows us to do planting green, but not only allows us to do planting green, but allows us to plant green early, which is what a lot of our farmers are doing.

14:01
And these are some pictures from crop consultant here in Southern Wisconsin, Eric Birschbach.

14:07
Eric sent me those pictures.

14:09
This, this particular field here was planted green with soybean on Sunday, April 17th, K to 12 days later, you see those soybeans starting to germinate there.

14:21
So really neat scenario where there was enough biomass, the cover crop early on, the farmer was able to plant early and green OK benefit from like increasing the unit potential by early planting, yet getting good weed suppression from that cover crop.

14:35
So quite fascinating.

14:37
All right, so for the, the, the remaining time that I have here now I want to start thinking about this growing season, now as far as post emergence goes?

14:46
OK, so we’re almost done wrapping up planting pre emergence applications.

14:52
Now I want to start providing some information that hopefully will help you with post emergence weed management decisions.

14:59
OK, the first one is to have a good understanding of what’s happening around the state as far as resistance goes, especially with water hemp, right?

15:08
So we’ve done a lot of research here.

15:10
We looked at the profile of our weeds around the state, especially waterhemp seeds that were collected in the fall of 18 and now we’re doing comparisons of what’s happening with seeds collected in 2023, OK.

15:22
And we’re doing that for multiple herbicides.

15:25
So for 2,4-D, atrazine and Dicamba in a five year span, we’re seeing rapid evolution of herbicide resistance in Waterhemp.

15:37
This herbicides that I just mentioned, OK, So rapid adaptation to 2,4-D, atrazine and Dicamba at very alarming rates, OK.

15:46
And these are very important herbicides here for our state.

15:49
So it’s important to keep that in mind.

15:51
We’re putting a lot of selection pressure on these herbicides.

15:54
Other herbicides that I have here in the yellow are the ones that I’m starting to get concerned about.

15:59
First one being fomesafen.

16:00
We’re seeing an uptick in resistance and the same is true for mesotrione, OK or Callisto.

16:07
We’re seeing an increased frequency of plants surviving application in the greenhouse.

16:13
So keep that in mind.

16:14
One piece of good news as far as resistance goes, we’re not seeing a change for glufosinate, OK.

16:22
So glufosinate resistance profile has remained the the same here over the past five years, but we need to be strategic about how we use glufosinate.

16:33
Otherwise, you all know what I’m going to be talking about when we do this exercise again a few years down the road.

16:40
OK.

16:41
So Rodrigo, what are your recommendations now thinking about Enlist soybean, which is being adopted by a lot of stakeholders around the state?

16:50
Well, here’s some trials that we did last year.

16:53
We looked at control of waterhemp with Enlist one alone, Liberty One alone, and then Enlist One plus Liberty.

17:01
And then we had two trials, one of the O’Brien family farms in Brooklyn, one at the Rock County farm in Janesville.

17:07
And the message across this two sites is very similar.

17:11
Putting the two herbicides worked quite well.

17:15
OK, there’s a caveat.

17:17
You want to be spraying 3 inch tall water hemp.

17:20
You don’t want to let that water hemp grow more than that, even when using the mix.

17:24
The mix is very effective when the weeds are still small.

17:29
OK.

17:29
The other benefit is Liberty by itself is quite finicky, OK, so you need the right environmental conditions to work.

17:38
When we’re mixing Liberty and Enlist, we still want to be applying during sunny conditions, high relative humidity and all that.

17:47
But that doesn’t always happen, right?

17:49
We all know that.

17:50
OK.

17:51
So by mixing the two, that kind of opens up the window when we can be spraying these herbicides, OK?

17:58
Because then you don’t need everything to be perfect for liberty.

18:01
You of course you want it to be, but that’s not always the case out there.

18:05
And by mixing Liberty within list, you kind of widen up your application window here as far as conditions within your day for spraying this two way mix yet getting good, getting good weed control.

18:18
OK, so here’s just to validate what I just said.

18:21
This is a series of greenhouse work that our team has conducted in the greenhouse work led by Ahmad Mobli in our lab.

18:30
OK, So what we’re doing here, I wanted to look at the the panels on the left.

18:34
So on top here, on the top left, I have 2, 4-D by itself.

18:39
On the bottom left, I have glufosinate by itself.

18:42
These were sprayed when the weeds were three inches tall, OK, or they actually, excuse me, different sizes.

18:48
So we have one inch waterhemp, 2 inch waterhemp, 4 inch waterhemp, 6, 8, and 10.

18:54
The main message here for 2, 4-D, as you go from one to two inches, you still get good control.

19:01
Once you start passing that two inches, it starts requiring more herbicide to control.

19:06
With 2, 4-D.

19:08
With Liberty, you have up to 4 inches until we start requiring more herbicides.

19:14
When we’re putting the two together, you can spray in the greenhouse up to 4 to 6 inches before it starts requiring higher doses of herbicide.

19:23
So what is the message here?

19:25
Mixing really helps and you want to be spraying small weeds, preferably when they’re smaller than 4 inches tall.

19:34
Once they start passing that 4 inch mark, controlling even with the two way mixture becomes very, very challenging.

19:42
It’s not a herbicide fault and it become it just becomes a timing fault.

19:47
OK, one friendly reminder, in our state here, we’re starting to plant soybeans quite early, OK, The earlier we plant our beans, the earlier they will flower.

20:01
So if you planted soybeans early April, just like or.

20:05
In mid-april, just like we did in these plots here on the left last year, by June 20th, they’re going to start flowering.

20:12
And once they start flowering, that becomes their cutoff for application of Liberty and Enlist 1.

20:17
I remember vividly last year, June 21st, I start getting a lot of calls say, hey, Rodrigo, my early planted beans are all flowering.

20:24
I haven’t sprayed yet.

20:25
What do I do?

20:27
You have a very narrow window at that point to go out there and deploy your Liberty and your Enlist because if you wait any longer than the, you know, June 20th or so, quickly you become off label.

20:39
OK, So if you planted your beans very early, by very early, I’m talking about mid-april, late April, be ready to deploy your final post application of Liberty and enlist no later than June 20 to the 25th.

20:54
OK Rodrigo, what about corn?

20:58
Is there something there that I should be thinking about for mixtures?

21:01
And this is some work that’s been done by my graduate student, Danny Zhu.

21:05
This population that you have in front of you is actually highly resistant to atrazine.

21:10
And we just confirmed it.

21:11
To have low level resistance to mesotrione.

21:15
So here in front of you, the square box is a 1X rate, or 1 pint of atrazine on the left.

21:21
On the right, 3 fluid ounces of mesotrione.

21:24
OK, so atrazine alone about 10% control, Mesotrione at 3 fluid ounces post 70% control.

21:32
Rodrigo, what about mixing these two?

21:33
We know in the literature that this is a good way to go.

21:37
There’s synergism between photosystem 2 inhibitors and HPPD inhibitors.

21:41
What happened if you have a resistant waterhemp population to both atrazine and mesotrione, what Danny shows here is despite this population being resistant, when he mixed the two chemistries together, we still got excellent control.

21:55
So that’s the theme of my presentation here for post applications.

21:59
When you’re deploying a post application and you’re dealing with difficult to control waterhemp, have a two way mix that works well together.

22:07
And I just provided a good example for soybean, here’s an example for corn.

22:11
Rodrigo, we are in Wisconsin.

22:13
We have areas in the state where we cannot use atrazine.

22:16
What can we do?

22:18
Here is research that Danny has started last year and is going to continue this year.

22:22
We’re looking at atrazine replacements.

22:25
One thing that we found here through Danny’s research is that bromoxynil or moxy, formerly known as Buctril can be a good replacement for atrazine in these areas.

22:35
So here is Moxy by itself on waterhemp, Callisto by itself on that same waterhemp resistant population.

22:40
60% control only.

22:43
But when we put Moxy and Callisto together, we did see effective control.

22:48
And the same story is true for giant ragweed.

22:51
Moxy by itself, poor control.

22:53
Callisto by itself, poor control, mixed together, excellent control.

22:58
So again, putting things that work together to help us get more effective weed control post emergence.

23:07
So the the couple final slides here, we’re going to a new area of research expanding.

23:12
We’re going to continue to work with the One Smart spray.

23:16
We’ve been working with them for the past three years.

23:19
We’re focusing on targeted herbicide application technologies.

23:21
We just started to work with John Deere.

23:24
We have 120 foot boom sprayer at Arlington where we’re going to be doing a lot of research with the Arlington team as well as the John Deere team looking at the feasibility of this technology here in Wisconsin.

23:38
And we’re also working with ARA Eco Robotics out of Europe where we’re looking at ultra precision applications for non-GMO crops.

23:48
So stay tuned on that.

23:50
And last slide that I have here is this recent announcement from Bayer in 2027, what they’re calling the Vyconic soybean platform will be available.

24:03
That’s a novel trait, OK.

24:05
What is Vyconic soybean is soybean that’s going to be resistant to glyphosate, glufosinate, dicamba and 2,4-D plus mesotrione, OK?

24:15
This is going to be commercially available starting in 2027.

24:19
And I think I’m foreseeing this, this trait here, this new platform will be heavily adopted across Wisconsin and the Midwest.

24:29
So we’re going to start doing some work, a lot of opportunities with this new trait for for control of resistant weeds.

24:36
But if you’re looking at the herbicides that we can use, there’s a lot of cross herbicides that can be used now both in corn and soybeans, OK.

24:46
So we’re going to be putting a lot of selection pressure on a few herbicides.

24:49
So we need to be very, very strategic.

24:51
Stay tuned on that.

24:52
I want to thank all the sponsors, the grower commodity board industry for supporting us, especially during this very challenging times we’re going through as far as funding for our extension and research work so we can stay afloat here.

25:06
And this amazing team that I get a chance to work with with every day so I can come and present data to you.

25:12
So with that, I’m going to end up here.

25:14
Jerry, back to you.

25:16
Thank you so much.

25:16
Sorry, I went a couple minutes long here.