A natural soil compound shields young wheat from herbicide drift
Crop Improvement
Herbicide drifting over a fence from a neighbor's spraying can stunt nearby vegetable and grain plantings, and this work shows a humic-type spray can blunt that injury when applied ahead of time.
Weedkiller mist can blow onto plants that weren't meant to be sprayed, and young wheat suffers from it. Researchers found that misting the leaves with fulvic acid, a natural compound made when organic matter breaks down in soil, kept the wheat greener, bigger, and better fed. Spraying it a few days before the drift protected best, and one wheat variety benefited more than the other.
Key Findings
Fulvic acid at 5 g/L was the optimum dose out of six tested (1, 3, 5, 7, 10, 15 g/L) against simulated glyphosate drift at 3% of the recommended weed-kill rate.
Treated wheat had more biomass, longer roots, more chlorophyll, better gas exchange, and higher shoot Cu, Mn, Fe, and Zn than untreated drift-exposed plants.
Applying fulvic acid 3 days before glyphosate beat same-day application; mixing it with glyphosate caused no observable damage; cultivar Magenta was less sensitive and benefited more than Scepter.
chevron_right Technical Summary
Spraying fulvic acid, a natural soil-derived compound, on young wheat sharply reduced damage from drifting glyphosate herbicide. Applying it a few days before the drift worked best, and mixing it with the herbicide left no visible damage.
Abstract Preview
Original paper
Foliar application of fulvic acid minimises the damage of glyphosate drift to wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) during early growth
Abstract Background and aims Glyphosate drift from applications to glyphosate-resistant crops can negatively affect growth of nearby wheat. Fulvic acid has demonstrated efficacy in alleviating vari...
open_in_new Read full abstractAbstract copyright held by the original publisher.
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Wheat is a group of wild and domesticated grasses of the genus Triticum. As cereals, they are cultivated for their grains, which are staple foods around the world. Well-known wheat species and hybrids include the most widely grown common wheat, spelt, durum, emmer, einkorn, and Khorasan or Kamut....