AUDIO: Thorsten Schwindt, Bayer fungicide product manager
A chemical company offers growers a new tool to protect their crops from disease and external stress.
Bayer’s Crop Protection division unveils Delaro? , a dual-mode fungicide, before the 2018 growing season. Thorsten Schwindt serves as fungicide product manager for Bayer. Schwindt says Bayer conducted extensive research on Delaro? throughout the 2017 growing season and received encouraging results.
?We had roughly 500 grower trials across the Corn Belt, as far east as Pennsylvania and Ohio to as far west as Nebraska,? Thorsten said. ?What was interesting (is) it was (tested) in different climatic conditions. In 2017, the east was incredibly wet – there was a lot of precipitation – (and) it was very dry in states like Iowa and Nebraska. The great thing was we could actually test Delaro? in a lot of different conditions.?
Delaro? will provide protection to corn and soybeans, but may also be utilized on crops such as chickpeas, lentils, dry peas and sugar beets. Schwindt shares Bayer?s results for corn and soybean field trials.
?On soybeans, we saw a return, on average incremental use, of four to five bushels on untreated. In corn, (we saw a) 15+ bushel return. In some cases, above 20 (bushels) which was very encouraging. It marks a new level of fungicide performance as we compare that to our own standards and a prior product.?
Schwindt credits Delaro?s dual mode of action for increased yields.
?The way we built Delaro ?, you get residual out of both components,? Schwindt said. ?You control a broad spectrum of disease with both modes of action. Then it doesn?t matter at what time different diseases show up. If you are in a situation where you?re competing with some form of resistant disease, you have such a strong second mode of action in there that you have an extended control coming out.?
Schwindt says Delaro?s dual mode of action sets it apart from other fungicides available.
?We all know that fungicides like Delaro? help soybean plants get through some of the external, non-disease stresses. In this case, moisture stress. The soybean plant then becomes much more resilient and then when some later rains hit, the soybean plant had not shutdown production. In the meantime, they were exposed to moisture stress and were already to produce right away when the rainfalls came later in August,? Schwindt said.
