01/08/09 An update on Huskie herbicide

Farm and Ranch January 8, 2009 Last year Bayer CropScience introduced a new broadleaf cereal herbicide, Huskie. Bayer representative Al Sartini says that introduction went great in the Pacific Northwest. Sartini: "A product like Huskie is a rep's dream. It was a terrific product. We had a wonderful launch. Here in the northwest we had somewhere between 500 and 600-thousand acres of Huskie hit the ground last spring. And to my knowledge at this point we have yet to have a complaint from a grower on lack of performance. Anytime you bring a new product to the marketplace and you are not finding problems like that it is pretty amazing. It has been terrific. It works on many of the weeds like china lettuce and Russian thistle that have a high percentage of ALS resistance. It has worked very well on those." Sartini says on spring wheat and spring barley Huskie is all you need. In winter wheat a tank mix partner will help on mayweed and bedstraw. Huskie can work on weeds with ALS resistance because it has a totally different mode of action. Sartini: "It kills weeds in a different way. It is called an HPPD inhibitor. It is the newest mode of action anywhere in the world. There are only a couple of other products that have that mode of action. They have had them a couple of years in the corn market." As for supplies of Huskie this year; Sartini: "We will have a lot more product available this year. It won't be an unlimited supply, but it will be dramatically more than we had last year available." I'm Bob Hoff and that's the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on the Northwest Ag Information Network.