How Do I Apply Herbicides in Cereal Crops to Maximise Control?
06 March 2025, UK: Know your enemy
Let’s face it; to maximise control over weeds in cereal crops, you first need to know what you’re up against. Understanding the weed species you’re facing and how best to tackle them is the first step in taking control.
Identify those weeds
If you want to use herbicides effectively, you need to know which ones to use, and what you’re targeting. Just five wild oat or eight ryegrass plants per square metre can reduce yields by more than £60/ha, so understanding the target species and prevalence is the first step.
Timing and technology
Remember to keep an eye on the weather – timing is not just the difference between pre- and post-emergence herbicides. What is going to happen meteorologically speaking is as important as the stage in the lifecycle of weeds. It’s also not advisable to apply herbicides when crops are showing any sign of nutrient stress.
Knowing when not to spray is as important as how you spray. Syngenta’s Spray Assist App gives you guidance on treatment, weather conditions and application techniques.
Top tips from our technical team
As well as general guidance and advice on what you can do, we wanted to include a few key comments from our technical team. Here, Georgina Young, Syngenta Technical Manager, gives her top tips so you can benefit from her experience and technical expertise, and integrate this into your control plan.
Putting more water in the tank means applications will take a little more time, but we’ve seen considerable benefits year after year in trials. Higher water volumes mean you get better coverage of the field. If someone told you there was a new herbicide on the market which would give you an extra 8-10% control, you’d be willing to pay a significant amount of money for that. Spending more time on herbicide applications is a tricky decision in a busy season when you’re trying to get everything done, but sometimes I think doing a bit less and doing it well will serve you better.
Get the best out of your herbicides by separating applications out
Separating applications is challenging. We’re often mixing PGRs, fungicides, and other products, and you want them to hit the crop and the herbicide in the tank to hit the weed. When conditions aren’t so favourable you absolutely need to get the best out of your herbicides. Separating those applications out is the right thing to do to target the weeds in the best possible way. Then spray again with the other products in the tank, targeting those at the crop.
We’re here to help
We’re a partnership; always here to help you with guidance on the best spraying techniques so that weeds can be effectively controlled, and the yield of your crops maximised.
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