With the increased acreage of beans in the ground, along with fewer pulse herbicides now available due to registration issues, there could well be more crops that will require a post-emergence herbicide this year, according to chemical company BASF.

Jonathan Ball, BASF pulse product manager, said: “Peas and beans suffer heavily from weed competition during their early stages of growth, and early weed removal is essential to protect yield and quality. This year, because of the higher prices of the end product, more beans were drilled than anticipated and, although pre-emergence herbicides such as Nirvana were applied on a fair proportion, there are still crops that have not been treated as yet. This is where Basagran SG comes in.”

Basagran SG (bentazone) is one of the rare post-emergence herbicide options for beans and peas. “Unfortunately, UK growers have lost the use of a number of good and effective herbicides in peas and beans recently,” Ball continued. “Simazine, Reflex T (terbutryn and fomesafen), Opogard/Battalion (terbutryn and terbuthylazine), Fortrol (cyanazine) and Bullet (cyanazine and pendimethalin) are no longer available. The loss of Fortrol has had a knock-on effect on the popular post-emergence pea herbicides of Pulsar (bentazone and MCPB) and Trifolex-Tra (MCPB and MCPA), as their use was dependent on the addition of cyanazine.”

Post-emergence options for broad-leaved weed control in winter field beans, spring beans and broad beans remain solely with Basagran SG. It is also recommended in vining and combining peas as one of the true post-emergence products, applied from the third node onwards.

“Basagran SG offers good flexibility, particularly when there is a need for late or follow-up control of difficult weeds such as Cleavers or Black Nightshade. It also gives good control of Volunteer rape, Charlock, Chickweed, Fools Parsley, Redshank, Shepherd’s-purse and Small Nettle. If you need to boost the control of Black-bindweed, Fat-hen, Fumitory and Orache, you have the option of adding MCPB to Basagran SG,” said Ball.

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