XtendFlex cotton training mandatory for growers, says Bayer

In the lead up to the potential approval of Bayer's XtendFlex cotton by the regulator, the company is hosting at least 25 spray applicator training sessions across Qld, NSW, NT and WA from July to October.

The majority of the Qld sessions will be in August and held in St George, Dirranbandi, Cecil Plains, Brookstead and Dalby.

XtendFlex cotton is the first cotton trait developed to be tolerant to over-the-top applications of glyphosate, dicamba and glufosinate-ammonium herbicides, which is aimed at managing a wider-spectrum of difficult-to-control and resistant weeds in-crop.

Stewardship training for chemical use in some crops is standard procedure, with products such as imidazolinone-tolerant sorghum requiring users to sign on.

Bayer technical advisor Richard Jackman urged anyone who wanted to use the technology to take part in the training.

"There's going to be a whole stewardship package that comes with it, so anyone that's going to be involved in applying it - the grower, the applicator, and we recommend even the consultant that's recommending it - is going to have to go through this program to be able to access the technology or access the trait," Mr Jackman said.

Mr Jackman said the focus was on setting up boom sprays properly to minimise any off-target movement of chemicals.

"We feel we've got the volatility component [controlled], [but] the bit that we can't control is the off-target movement with a physical drift," he said.

There has certainly been plenty of media talk, particularly in the US, around sensitive crops being damaged by off target spraying of dicamba.

However, Mr Jackman said their research showed huge amounts had to be used for damaged to occur.

"When we do our humidome work and look at the volatility of product, you've really got to get up to about four times the X rate [of dicamba] to actually start seeing any crop damage and we find that early damage is limited to just a bit of crinkling and you don't really see any yield impact on it."

Bayer has also developed an app to assist users of the product.

"You can plug in your location and it'll give you a printout of the potential wind, the humidity and the conditions that are going to be suitable for spraying it, so that's going to be a really good tool and that's available now for most areas," Mr Jackman said.

Mr Jackman said the chemistry was all about giving growers more control options for their harder to kill weeds like barnyard, feathertop, fleabane and sow thistle, which weren't being controlled as well by the Roundup system.

"This year, we've seen a surge in fleabane coming back and feathertop Rhodes, and the brilliant part about this technology is it's really picking up those weeds."

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