New Pasture Herbicide

Corteva's DuraCor has passed the registration finish line, with a label from the EPA issued in time for the 2020 season.

This pasture and rangeland herbicide boasts the first new active ingredient for broadleaf weed control in these environments in 15 years. The goal of DuraCor is two-fold: improved weed control and increased grazing acres.

John Byrd, Extension weed specialist at Mississippi State University, says reduced productivity is common in areas with high populations of weeds like horsenettle, marshelder and Brazilian vervain. "Anywhere you have complete ground cover with any of those, you are losing forage base because animals won't graze those sites," he says.

Corteva's Jillian Schmiedt notes the new herbicide's active ingredient, Rinskor, is winner of the American Chemical Society's 2018 Green Chemistry Challenge Award. Schmiedt adds DuraCor controls more than 140 broadleaf weed species, but is safe on forage grass and has a low use rate at 12 ounces per acre, half that of the current market standard. It is compatible with dry and liquid fertilizer, low odor, offers extended broadleaf weed control, has a wider application window and is a non-restricted use product.

"DuraCor brings together two actives that received reduced-risk status under the EPA's Conventional Reduced Risk Pesticide Program," she notes. "Both are highly effective in controlling weeds, yet give producers a product with a very favorable environmental profile."

Along with common range and pasture weeds (thistles, ragweed, horsenettle, pigweed), DuraCor showed improved control of tough-to-control broadleaf species including wild carrot, giant hogweed, wild parsnip, plantain, poison hemlock, sunflower and aster families, and common caraway. It provides better control of mature marshelder, Canada thistle, tall ironweed and others.

Scott Flynn, Corteva's zonal biology leader, adds that DuraCor's advantages go beyond cattle grazing.

"Many invasive [weed] species not only reduce forage production, they also threaten the rangeland ecosystem and other fragile sites," Flynn says. "DuraCor provides a new option for protecting, improving and preserving the land—whether for livestock grazing, wildlife habitat or mixed uses."

(CC/AG)

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