Following up on my post last week about T&V herbicide changes, today I want to focus on hot-off-the-presses information about Alion (active ingredient = indaziflam) manufactured by Bayer CropScience.
Alion herbicide, which was labeled in California tree nuts, citrus, stone fruit and pome fruit was just received a supplemental label for use in grapes. For grapes there is not a range of use rates like in orchards - only 5 fl oz of product per acre (0.065 lb ai/A) is registered and only one application per 12 month period is allowed. See the attached supplemental label at the bottom of this post for more details. Until we get a little more experience with the herbicide in the wide range of soils in which we grow grapes in California, applications of Alion will be limited to grapes that are at least 5 years old and are vigorously growing. I would hope that, in the future, we may be able to amend this down to three years as in orchard crops (one year in citrus).
As I've mentioned several times previously, Alion has been a very good preemergence material in many recent orchard evaluations. It has PRE activity on many broadleaf and grass weeds and, because it is a group 29 herbicide, it gives another mode of action opportunity to control glyphosate resistant weeds in orchards (and now vineyards). It provides long residual control but is tighly bound to soil so it has low leaching potential. It does not have any POST activity, though, so a burn-down partner will be needed if emerged weeds are present.
In some recent tests, it has been excellent as a solo product while in other trials it has been beneficial to include something like rimsulfuron to help with just-about-to emerge weeds or with a dinitroanaline herbicide like pendimethalin (Prowl) or oryazalin (Surflan) to maximize grass control. For few examples of weed control data with Alion, take a look at Mick's data that was posted today or data from my lab posted in September. Better yet, visit a UC Cooperative Extension Field Day or a research and demo trial put out by your local industry representative and see how it does for yourself!
I understand that are are a couple other label additions for Alion in the works that will benefit more California orchard crops - I will share those once they wind their way through the approval process
Take care.
Brad
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