The contact and residual winter wheat herbicide Attribut has had the key brome species added to its label, making it an even more useful herbicide for spring usage in wheat.

Dr. David Stormonth, Technical Manager for Interfarm, explains that Attribut already has common couch, onion couch, loose silky-bent plus activity on black-grass and wild-oats as well as some broad-leaved weed species including field pennycress, wild mustard on the label.  “The activity of Attribut for brome control has long been known by agronomists and growers and these recent use extensions now confirm its excellent activity against this important group of grass weeds. The recent re-registration has led to barren or sterile brome, great brome, meadow brome, rye brome and soft brome all being added to its label. Users have also noted positive activity on volunteer barley, volunteer oilseed rape, flixweed and Shepherd’s purse. This makes Attribut a highly suitable herbicide for use post-emergence in wheat in the spring.”

To get the best results with Attribut, David advises that weeds should be healthy and growing vigorously at time of treatment. “The current freezing conditions should be avoided, but you have a good wide spray window to go for – from the 1st February and after 2 leaves (GS12) of the crop up until third node detectable stage (GS33). As far as weed stage is concerned, bromes can be treated up to before GS31, but best results will be achieved on smaller weeds.”

He points out that for best control of bromes, Attribut should be applied at 100gms/hectare together with a vegetable oil based adjuvant Toil.  “A series of trials show that Attribut plus Toil gave 91% control of meadow brome and 85% of sterile brome. Independent trials at Morley, where control was measured by heads/m², the Attribut treatments had 0.6 heads/m² compared to the untreated which had over 95 heads/m² - a significant and very positive result. Such weed control performance will undoubtedly maintain yield and reduce lodging risk and ergot associated with heavy grass-weed infestations.”

Dr. Stormonth warns that, whilst Attribut is effective against all brome species and couch, complete control may not be achieved in all situations.  “However you can be assured that in these cases, weed growth will still be suppressed and seed return greatly reduced.”

Attribut contains 70% w/w propoxycarbazone-sodium formulated as a water soluble granule. It is a residual grass-weed herbicide for use in winter wheat for the control of common couch, with useful activity against black-grass and bromes. It is applied at 100gms/hectare in 200 litres of water as a Medium spray. It can be applied from the 1st February onwards and after 2 leaves (GS12) of the crop up until third node detectable stage (GS33) of the crop. Attribut must not be used in sequence or mixture with any other ALS inhibitor (including sulphonylureas) containing products. Attribut has a LERAP B. It is packed in a 300 gms pack, to treat 3 hectares.