Page 18 - 21 Cotton SA February 2020

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Hard-to-control weeds in cotton.
WEED CONTROL

WITH GLYPHOSATE

AND ITS SAFETY

by Magda du Toit, Bayer

Every season, for every field, farmers must make more than 40 key decisions – all of

which can make or break a harvest. Many of these decisions relate to crop protection,
because at every stage of the growing season, seeds and plants are at risk from weeds,
insects, and disease.

Farmers have a variety of tools that they may on cotton that has the Roundup Ready Flex™
use to assist them and these include state-of-the- trait, to control weeds such as Wandering Jew
art seed treatments, herbicides, insecticides, (Wandelende Jood), Demoina bush (Maria-Maria-
fungicides, cultivation practices, cultivar choice, bossie), Amaranthus spp. (misbredie spesies),
biotechnologies, advanced data analytics, and Tribulus terrestris (dubbeltjie), and many others
many precision technologies. While these tools (see main photographs).
are powerful individually, they can enhance farm Glyphosate is one of the most widely used
productivity even more when used together. herbicides during the pre-plant period, to en-
Bayer’s approach is to keep innovating, but courage and enable conservation agriculture, as
always with the goal of making agriculture more well as in the later post-emergence period of cotton
sustainable. This means that crop protection and other field crops. These crops contain the
®
options available to farmers today, are more Roundup Ready technology, showing glyphosate
sustainable than at any point in history. tolerance, and this active ingredient accounts for
The herbicide glyphosate has been instrumental one of the most thoroughly evaluated herbicides in
in enabling cotton farmers to protect yields and to the world and has a long and proven history of safe
generate more income. To be able to generate a use. Extensive scientific evaluation of glyphosate
higher income, farmers need to protect their crops spanning over 40 years by respected international
from weeds, and agrochemicals like glyphosate agencies, has concluded that glyphosate poses no
offer one way for cotton farmers to minimise risk to human health or the environment when used
input costs, like labour costs. Glyphosate is used according to label instructions.

18 | Katoen SA \\ Cotton SA