Making your sugar beet herbicides work as effectively as possible

Last month, we hosted our second expert panel-led webinar following on from the success of our ‘Doing Disease Control Differently’ webinar in January. This time, the focus was all on sugar beet, weed control and input costs, and how growers can make sure their sugar beet herbicides work as effectively as possible in the coming months. Antonia Walker, UPL’s Technical Specialist for Sugar Beet, kicked off proceedings by welcoming our special guests for the evening, including:

Jock Willmott from Ceres, who shared his extensive knowledge in specialist crop management and agronomic benchmarking
Pam Chambers, UK technical support manager at British Sugar, to share her insights and recommendations on sugar beet herbicide programs and weed control strategies
Rob Suckling from De Sangosse, who passed on his technical expertise on adjuvant use

The costs of weed control in sugar beet Our panel began with an in depth discussion and review of the current input costs for sugar beet crops across the UK, including seed, fertiliser, fungicides, insecticides, and herbicides. Jock Willmott walked us through a range of predicted costs for 2024, with a wealth of data and insight that will be invaluable for any sugar beet grower. But as Jock said, “Seed, fertiliser, sprays - that's not the biggest part of the cost anymore. It's all about getting it established well and getting that canopy to close quickly." He highlighted the potential costs per hectare for herbicides depending on weed pressure, drawing particular attention to the difficulty in controlling weeds like blackgrass. Pam Chambers highlighted the benefits of pre-emergence, depending on the conditions, before discussion turned to the challenges of assessing the situation on the ground. "I would definitely be looking at a pre-emergence for blackgrass on mineral soils with ethofumesate and metamitron in the mix. If you think you're not going to get your first post-emergence on very timely, then it's useful to put a pre-emergence on," said Pam. “If you’re not sure about a pre-em application, straight could be a great choice.” Tailoring your herbicide programme As we dived deeper into trial data that showed good Fat Hen control with three applications of straight products, our panel explored the potential of BETTIX FLO (metamitron), EFECKT (ethofumesate), and BETASANA SC (phenmedipham). Pam’s detailed overview of a straight programme is a must watch. Talk turned to how weed control programmes have evolved with the loss of products like Max Pro, and how adjuvant use can play an important role here. As Rob Suckling said “adjuvant use becomes more important with the harder control weeds like Fat Hen, which is where you can see the greatest lift in performance.” On the subject of adjuvants, our experts highlighted how methylated seed oils can help improve herbicide performance, rain-fastness and drift reduction. “Methylated seed oil adjuvants can be less phytotoxic than mineral oils while still improving rain-fastness and penetration,” said Rob. Mineral oils like Crop Spray 11E, should be used at lower rates at higher temps to avoid phytotoxicity, whereas methylated seed oils like Phase 2 are more crop-safe and can be used at higher temps. Our webinar also included discussion about herbicide and adjuvant selection depending on temperature, soil condition and much more. To hear all the details, you’ll need to watch the full webinar. We talked about several key products in sugar beet weed control programmes, including CENTURION MAX (clethodim) and how it’s best for blackgrass control when applied early post-emergence. The key takeaways If you didn’t catch our webinar on sugar beet herbicides and straights programmes, don’t worry. It’s highly valuable viewing for any sugar beet grower. The key takeaways for the evening included:

How attention to detail like spray timings/intervals and excellent application are critical for weed control
Why using appropriate herbicide modes of action, resistance management and layering residual control is important
That cost-effective programmes require balancing inputs while maximising yield potential and sugar content.