Trials to combat seed building catch crops as weeds in following sugar beets

Abstract

The growing popularity of catch crops in the scope of greening and increasing milder winters can lead to problems with self-seeding catch crops in following summer crops. The effective ranges of so far successfully applied herbicides usually do not provide information on the efficacy against e.g. mallow, yellow mustard and common vetch.
To answer this question a pot trial with 10 catch crops (buckwheat, (tansy) phacelia, oil radish, berseem clover, common vetch, common mallow, linseed, black oat, yellow mustard and niger thistle) was carried out under semi field conditions at the University of Applied Science in Soest / Germany in 2016. The catch crops were cultivated separately and treated once in early growth stages with the sugarbeet herbicides Goltix Titan and Belvedere Extra as well as a customary combination of both products. The combination achieved high efficacy against buckwheat, phacelia, berseem clover, linseed and niger thistle.
In 2016 this approach was transferred to a field trial, where the competitive ability of sugarbeet was factored in and treatments were customarily applied three times according to the cotyledons stages (NAK 1-3). Three catch crops that were identified as problematic were sown shortly before or with the sugarbeets. The treatments were the same as in 2016. The mixture of Goltix Titan and Belvedere Extra was the best variant with high efficiency on all three catch crops. Belvedere Extra showed a similar and sufficient effect.