SEPTEMBER 2020 F10
FARM & RANCH
THE NORTH PLATTE TELEGRAPH
Soybean evolves to match fight for weed control Bayer plans to offer XtendFlex soybeans for 2021 growing season
glyphosate-resistant pigweeds like Palmer amaranth, best manag- ing them in XtendFlex soybean fields would start with a residual herbicide with multiple modes of action at plant- ing and then a single application of glufos- inate, Jhala found. The Environmental Protection Agency submission in support of a new registration for XtendiMax herbi- cide with VaporGrip technology for the 2021 season. If XtendFlex and XtendiMax aren’t ultimately avail- able for next year, the company would still have Roundup Ready 2Xtend soybeans avail- able. Farmers can use Roundup and another approved herbicide for post-emergence weed control. Further into the future, Streck said there’s other Bayer technology coming in three to four years: is currently re- viewing Bayer’s “We continue to have a robust soybean pipe- line, bringing multiple traits to the market- place.”
Soybean Association. Palmer amaranth is a pigweed that’s been spreading northward and quickly developing resistance to herbi- cides. “We’ve got to have these new traits ap- proved and different herbicide options all the time, or the weeds are going to win,” Johnston said. “Soybeans are one of this nation’s top ex- ports and if we can’t have these new technol- ogies, the exports will dwindle because we wouldn’t be able to con- tinue raising the same volume of beans.” University Extension educators have been conducting summer trials on XtendFlex. At the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, weed management spe- cialist Dr. Amit Jhala has been doing field studies the last cou- ple of years. He’s found the XtendFlex soybean to have “outstanding” tolerance to all three post-emergence her- bicides — dicamba, glufosinate and glypho- sate. When it comes to
dealers in September. Some farmers are frustrated with the court ruling that pulled dicamba’s regis- tration this summer. “It’s difficult to ac- cept that a court 1,500 miles away who has no idea how farming works could so nega- tively impact us,” said soybean farmer Steve Kuhlmann of Chester, Nebraska. “If neither the XtendFlex gets ap- proved or if dicamba is not re-approved, then I’ll still use Fierce MTZ and the Enlist product.” Another Nebraska soybean farmer, Robert Johnston, said all of his beans are Xtend, and he’s hoping the XtendFlex and the al- ternative to dicamba will (both) be approved for the sake of cleaner fields. “We’re getting inun- dated with weeds here. The Palmer amaranth is coming in like cra- zy, and other weeds are also getting resis- tant,” said Johnston, who grows soybeans, corn and alfalfa near Clearwater, Nebraska and serves as chair- man of the Nebraska
San Francisco this summer. “We expect to re- ceive authorization in the near term, and we’re planning a full launch of XtendFlex when we receive im- port approval from the European Commission in Brussels, Belgium,” said Lisa Streck, Bayer Crop Science soybean Launch Lead. She said XtendFlex has passed all the safe- ty testing, and with EU authorization, they will take pre-orders from
Midwest Messenger A new herbicide-re- sistant soybean called XtendFlex is expect- ed to be approved and ready for growers to plant next spring. XtendFlex is ge- netically engineered to have resistance to three different chem- ical modes of action — dicamba, glufosinate
and glyphosate — al- lowing farmers to use all three in their bean fields to battle weeds. The new soybean va- riety comes at a time when farmers are awaiting a decision on dicamba’s federal reg- istration after it was pulled from shelves fol- lowing a ruling from the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in
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