Planting is in full swing across much of the United States, which means it’s time for farmers to start thinking ahead to the remainder of the growing season. As the crop establishes a solid root architecture and puts out greater leaf mass, the plant reaches a point that it impacts yield. Lynn Justesen, technical service lead for UPL, says using a full-spectrum production system to control diseases can also provide additional crop health benefits.
One strategy UPL recommends is UNLOCK 5™. The UNLOCK 5 system identifies targeted strategies and solutions to ensure more efficient and profitable crop protection.
- Establishment — Focus is on developing root mass, promoting shoot emergence and achieving vigor and uniformity of crop emergence.
- Architecture — Focus is on providing for a solid root architecture, stem diameter and yield structures (such as corn ears).
- Photosynthesis — Focus is on creating greater leaf mass to promote greater photosynthetic activity, chlorophyll utilization and CO2 fixation.
- Reproduction — Focus is on grain size and quality, which is determined by promoting efficient flowering, pollination and cell division.
- Sizing — Focus is on movement of sugars from vegetative tissues to reproductive tissues, which help determine yield.
These solutions focus on promoting higher nutrient uptake and crop vigor, resulting in improved plant tolerance to environmental stress. The solutions can be individual, multiple or sequenced and include plant growth regulators (PGRs), biostimulants and other plant health or innovative nutrition products.
Fungicides such as FORTIX®, TEPERA®, TEPERA® PLUS and ZOLERA® FX from UPL are part of the UNLOCK 5 system and can provide maximum performance and yield in corn.
“As you think about your corn crop, if you don't have anything in-furrow, the plant is unprotected once the fungicide from the seed treatment wears off — which is about 28 days after it's planted. You may want to consider an early application (V5 to V8) such as FORTIX to achieve that same early protection we get with our in-furrow products,” Justesen says.
“If you already have something in-furrow, then you need to start thinking about the crop closer to tasseling — this ties into the UNLOCK 5 strategy. If you either put TEPERA PLUS in-furrow or if we use something like FORTIX early in the corn’s life cycle, you can then wait until we're right at that tasseling time frame, or in the reproductive phase of growth, and start considering products such as ZOLERA FX to finish the crop out,” Justesen says.
ZOLERA FX has had impressive results when used in corn. Studies and on-farm field trials in corn showed that ZOLERA FX, when applied at VT, improved plant health and increased yields.
“We've seen some outstanding yield and plant health benefits and stress mitigation with ZOLERA FX. Along with a full-spectrum approach, we not only improve the yield, we end up with a greener, more stable, more robust plant,” Justensen says.
To learn more about how the use of fungicides can improve performance and yield in corn, listen here.
