The introduction of multiple new herbicide resistant soybean varieties as well as new herbicide options for control of herbicide resistant weeds has led to the increase need of attention to detail for farmers and applicators.  This include attention to detail when making the herbicide applications.   The increased use of herbicide like 2,4-D and dicamba late into the growing season has led to a heightened awareness of pesticide drift.  At the same time there has been an increased use of contact products like glufosinate and increased use of tank-mixes of contact and systemic product.  This has led to need for applicators to fine tune their equipment for each application to maximize the product while reducing the potential of drift.

In the winter of 2018/2019 Dr. Legleiter presented a “Nozzle selection for herbicide applications” presentation that was paired with a general weed control talk.  Many times these talks were also paired with dicamba specific training's for fulfillment of the training requirement to apply dicamba.   The talk included the use of a spray table to demonstrate the drift reduction potential of each nozzle as well the droplet spectrum produced by each nozzle.  The presentation was presented to over 600 individuals at 10 county locations.  

The success of the talk in conjunction with a general weed control talk  and dicamba training was surmised by an email received from a County ANR Agent who had hosted a meeting and had a producer return after the meeting with positive comments:

“Gentlemen:

Thank you both for taking care of me and my clientele this past Friday. I appreciate it so very much. I had a producer text me and tell me that he appreciated the class and it provided him with more information about dicamba. In fact so much so, that he said he would be using liberty beans this year. Another producer told me that the class was very good and it was what he needed to help him with decision making for the 2019 year. Job well done as I knew would be the case.

Thanks Again

Darrell “