Cotton Seed Distributors article

A video version is available at www.csd.net.au/  

On today's Web On Wednesday the CSD Extension and Development Team discuss the benefits and practical implications of the New Roundup Ready Flex® technology with Steve Ainsworth from Monsanto and Joe Robinson of Moree.

Advantages of Flex

Welcome to this weeks WOW. Today we talk to Steve Ainsworth from Monsanto and Joe Robinson, a cotton grower in the Gwydir district.

Steve gives us a rundown on what he sees as the benefits of the new technology, Roundup Ready Flex and Joe gives a practical outline of how he is using the technology this season with his cotton crop.

I am talking to Steve Ainsworth from Monsanto.

Steve Ainsworth

Steve, a fair bit of Roundup Ready Flex out there in the industry this year, can you make some comments about what growers should look out for with this new technology?

Yes sure Adam. It has been the first year where Roundup Ready Flex has been used on a reasonable scale in the industry. We have been really pleased that a lot of growers are having a look at Roundup Ready Flex for the first time and I think the experience which people are getting will put them in good stead for looking at their weed control practices on farm going forward with this product.

So what sort of things should they look out for in this first year, you know all their experience has been with Roundup Ready, what should they look out for with Flex?

Sure, Roundup Ready Flex the addition of the new promoter and the second copy of the CP4 gene gives growers the ability to really time their weed control to be aimed at the weeds in the field and we have seen some really good examples of that this year. We have seen people have been able to get on weed control in the last couple of weeks following the recent rain event we had here in Narrabri for example. Being able to spray after that flush of weeds which was quite interesting because in Roundup Ready cotton a lot of people weren’t able to achieve that with the closing of the application window. So that has been really good. We have had some really good grower comments around flexibility and application, being able to apply the herbicide at a time when environmental conditions are really positive from a non-target application so that has been really important and I think the other thing which has been a really good thing because there is not a huge amount of Flex out there but there is enough for people to look at is being able to identify where on the farm people have got their Roundup Ready cotton planted and their Roundup Ready Flex cotton and it has been really good that CSD have produced some signs, we have produced some field markers to enable good communication with people on farm to make sure the applications are made to the right crop at the right stage.

And I guess with Flex we are going to see some applications later into the season where you may have some other crops planted around, is there a watch out for there?

I think it is important across the farm in general to ensure that applications of the herbicide are made in the correct environmental conditions and that is one of the beauties of the product is it has got a great deal of flexibility up to the sixteen nodes for over the top in the first part of the window. Three applications are possible within that time so that gives grower the ability to wait until conditions are really appropriate, really important this year where there is a lot of potential sorghum plantings going in and other crops so we can minimize any movement of any herbicide onto those susceptible crops.

Can you tell us a little bit about the demonstrations that Monsanto have initiated with Roundup Ready Flex technology?

Yes sure Adam. Under this year we have been able to look to establish a series of technology demonstration sites. Up until this year with the conditions when the product wasn’t registered the ability to compare weed control systems with Roundup Ready Flex was quite restricted so we thought its very important for growers to be able to look at the benefits of the weed control system with Flex versus other systems and to that end we have established a number of sites across the industry which compare a Roundup Ready system versus a Flex system versus a conventional system in a commercial sense for the growers under their own operations so people can look side by side on a field basis and compare weed control systems.

Joe Robinson

Joe, you are one of the largest growers of Flex cotton this season, can you just give me an indication of the area you have got on and how you have actually planted.

We have planted 800 hectares here on ‘Telleraga’ and about the same on ‘Moreton’ and ‘Mitchell Plains’. It is all on a one in one out configuration or a two metre spacing and we have done that really I guess we are a bit tired of having so much fallow country, we can try and utilize a bit more land, it also gives us an opportunity where if we get water in January and February we can water it and we are not over committed to a solid planting where if you run short of water you are going to loose a lot of money.

Joe this is the third year now that you have tried this one in one out configuration or the two metre configuration, what advantages are you seeing under the Flex system that you didn’t have underneath a Roundup Ready system?

I guess the first thing is that this one was planed as opposed to the other two when they were really cutting rows out due to a lack of water. One of the issues that we had always faced is that if you have a two metre gap between the plants and you get through to January and then water is available and then you water it in the past, weed control has just been a major issue trying to get in there with shielded sprayers and alike, its just the timing of operations, trying to get the place tidied up it was near impossible so the beauty here is I don’t know when its going to get water hopefully we will keep it going with a bit of rain. It is planted late, it has been planted affectively on the 3rd November and we planted ahead of 30 or 40mls of rain and it just means that when it does get water when we get a germination we can just come in over the top with a Roundup Ready spray and get control of 99% of the weeds anyway.

Joe you have just mentioned in regards to the ease of operation with this technology later in the season with weed control. What other benefits do you see in regards to using the Flex technology?

I guess it is all to do with timing of applications. I think this time last year for a similar area in Roundup Ready cotton past four leaf stage we were trying to run shielded sprayers around the clock. Windy conditions making it difficult just drifting onto the Roundup Ready cotton so I guess we had two guys on day shift and two guys on night shift plus the management to chase water, all those issues so its probably six guys who affectively either we don’t have them here or they are able to do other jobs around the farm

Joe you have just mentioned that the cotton here you planted later than you normally would, what is going to be the program in regards to weed control for these blocks?

Well it would be pretty basic. One of the big advantages is we didn’t actually do a pre-plant spray, it was just coming through from its fallow period, didn’t necessarily feel pushed. We didn’t actually know when we would be planting, we were just sort of waiting, we wanted to be late to avoid the January heat so sort of early November late October was the window we were looking for so we were fortunate that we got that, we were able to just come in and knock the hill off a little bit, plant the cotton and so we have had one over the top Roundup spray about two weeks ago and I think we will get a bit more rainfall hopefully and probably get another germination and go again. The plan obviously is to give it some water at some point so it is pretty heavily dependent just on the Roundup from a resistance issue or point of view but my idea is to ‘screw’ as much out of the technology as we can but having said that I suggest that we will probably cultivate it in front of water if water becomes available but I mean it is a pretty good system, its reasonably clean at the moment.

Joe this is the second generation of the Roundup Ready technology with the Roundup Ready Flex, do you consider that you will be using this technology in the future?

I think so. I think it is an opportunity to have a look at our farming system and what we have been doing. We have had too much fallow recently, particularly in the dry years when we have got a water shortage; it is pretty expensive to run all that fallow country. What I would like to do is utilise, try and get a better land utilisation, better water utilisation so this one in one out, it maybe a case rather than going back to a system where 30% of the farms growing solid I might try and be growing 60 – 76% of the farm one in one out. If we get a full water year whether we go and plant the whole thing, all our developed hectares to one in one out cotton. We will see on the back of this year we will have some pretty good data. It was intended to be this way from the outset which hasn’t been the case previously. I also think that grain prices may be in an up slope, we might be able to incorporate more grain into our system. We may even try and get some ground cover.

Joe you have just mentioned that you are disappointed with the amount of fallow that you have to carry in some of these low water years, do you think that this technology may be able to help you with your land utilisation especially in regards to some of your rotational strategies?

Absolutely, I think we need to find a system perhaps where we plant all our developed land to a winter cereal leaving a space for our cotton and as the winter proceeds and we start to see what our water situation for cotton will be then it may be that we spray out some of the fields that are going to go to cotton, the others we can run through and try and have those fields that otherwise have been fallows producing income instead of costing us money. Its carrying fallows for three years for a cotton crop comes a pretty expensive burden by the time you are planting, so I think this technology we will be able to utilise to improve that situation.

Thanks for watching this weeks Web on Wednesday. For more information on the Roundup Ready Flex technology please contact your local Monsanto representative or keep your eye out for a series of field days being run over the next couple of weeks by Monsanto looking at the Roundup Ready Flex technology.