One of the most difficult challenges faced by farmers today is balancing the use of herbicides against the yield and quality of certain crops. One of those crops, which has grown in popularity among farmers in the Delta region of the United States, is grain sorghum.
Fortunately, a new herbicide-tolerant grain sorghum, known as Inzen Z, has been created to help make the crop more efficient and profitable for growers. According to DuPont Crop Protection and Advanta US, Inzen Z contains a non-GMO herbicide tolerance trait that enhances grass weed control, and ultimately helps growers improve their crop yield and quality.
Erick Larson, an Associate Research/Extension Professor of Plant and Soil Sciences at Mississippi State University shared his thoughts during MSU’s technology field day: “This technology will offer growers postemergence herbicides not feasible for conventional grain sorghum. Grain sorghum is a good crop on upland soils, where drought stress often limits crop yield, or when you get pushed into late planting.”
Inzen Z will be useful all over the nation, including for growers in Arkansas. In fact, Arkansas is one of the leading sorghum crop producers in the United States, along with Texas, Kansas, Louisiana, South Dakota, and Oklahoma.
According to Larson, Inzen Z was developed through traditional breeding methods, which allowed creators to insert ALS herbicide resistance into the plant naturally. The Z in the name stands for “Zest”, a herbicide formulation that will be used with the hybrids.
Most varieties of grain sorghum are already drought and heat-tolerant. However, growers still face the challenge of controlling grass weeds in grain sorghum, which in the past reduced U.S. grain sorghum yields by about 20 percent. By using Inzen Z, growers can now greatly reduce grass weeds, including broadleaf signal grass, barnyard grass, crabgrass, Johnson grass, and others.
“There have been very few postemerge options, and that’s where this system comes into play,” Larson said. “This will allow control of a variety of weed species, as well as crop tolerance to ALS herbicides, such as Leadoff. In our Inzen Z plots the past two years, we’ve evaluated various treatments on tall waterhemp, browntop millet, and morning-glory, and weed control has been exceptional.”
It’ll be interesting to see how Inzen Z affects the grain sorghum market both in the United States and globally. We would like to note with the as this newly developed crop technology improves farmer yield in Arkansas, investors will likely also benefit from investment lands that implement Inzen Z.
Source: Delta Farm Press