Farming Video | Do Adjuvants Really Change Spray Performance?

00:00:00 Hi, this is Kelly Gere from XT Extreme Ag. There's a lot of questions in agriculture sur surrounding adjuvants. 00:00:06 Is one better than the other? Is there really any difference in any of them? Some people will tell you it's not the sexiest topic, 00:00:12 but I have found on my farm with the trouble I have in my water, it is a very important thing to pay attention to. 00:00:17 So today we're at the ZA booth at Commodity Classic 26 in San Antonio. I'm with Derrick and Ryan of za. 00:00:24 They're gonna show us some of the ZA technology and why it can help you on your farm. Derrick, what are we gonna do with this test? 00:00:31 So, we're gonna demonstrate some of the technology that we have inside of our adjuvant portfolio. Um, you're right, adjuvants are always the most sexy topic. 00:00:39 Certainly not as exciting as a new John Deere tractor, but we believe they're just as valuable to your sprays. So what we're gonna look at today is a wax paper test. 00:00:48 This wax paper's going to represent the leaf structure of a plant, the epic particular wax that protects a plant from the environment. 00:00:54 Okay. And how each adjuvant interacts with that wax structure, which will equate to spray efficacy and efficiency. Okay. 00:01:02 So like if it's a weed, the chemicals are gonna get in better. If it's the corn plant, the foliar are gonna get in better. 00:01:08 Absolutely. That's what you're gonna help do. Yep. Okay. Okay. So the first one we're gonna look at is oral wet technology. 00:01:12 This is one of our proprietary foliar adjuvants. What we wanna look at is the way that droplet leaves a trail, almost like a slug trail down the wax. 00:01:25 I can see it there. There is a trail there. Nice and slow, consistent coverage down the the wax paper. Next one we're gonna look at is a crop oil concentrate. 00:01:37 Crop oil's not refined real well. Kind of messy, hard to handle. Sometimes This is just generic crop oil. 00:01:44 Yep. You see the inconsistency in the way that beads up? Yeah. It Just, it's running off like the 00:01:49 rain water or whatever. Yep. It Doesn't stick very well Like this, that that's actually soaked in. 00:01:55 It's it's breaking down the wax. Correct. Yep. Instead and the crop Oil's running all the way to the bottom. 00:01:59 Yep. And in the field, what you'll see here is the propensity to burn those droplets. Sit on the leaf structure, 00:02:06 sunlight hits 'em on a hot afternoon. It gets speckling sometimes very, it's Too concentrated there because 00:02:10 it hasn't spread out. Yeah. Very, very slow to penetrate. So here we're into non ionic surfactants as a category. 00:02:17 Our foliar adjuvants fit in that non ionic space. And so you're gonna see this is generally like a 90 10 something that's super competitive. 00:02:26 Generally cheap. I would say that's not as good as the crop. Right? Yeah. So, so imagine a, a heavy rain event 00:02:34 or high pressure from a spray rig blowing across the leaf surface in a canopy. 00:02:39 You don't have great adherence to the leaf structure. Sure. Right. And all of that adherence equates 00:02:44 to better penetration efficiency in the spray money back in your pocket if we can make it work. 00:02:50 So now we're back into a more refined crop oil. An MSO that's a little better. Not by much. Uh, 00:03:00 Yes. I can't see a lot of difference between that and The crop oil. And I, so now when we take a more refined, refined crop oil, 00:03:07 so a high surfactant methylated oil concentrate, it's the breakdown there. And we blend in some of our foliar adjuvant technology 00:03:16 with the oil check the difference out in the spreading. So not only will we improve the behavior of the oil on the leaf surface. 00:03:25 Yep. We're also gonna enhance penetration translocation systemically through the plant. You can see how it, it is even 00:03:32 and it's breaking down the wax just like the first one. Yep. Absolutely. And on a side note logistics, right? 00:03:39 When you're spraying a bunch of acres, if we can help you handle less product to do a better job, efficiency is a big deal there. 00:03:48 Absolutely. So here is a, an all in one competitor that exists in the marketplace. Well that one isn't really much better than the crop oil. 00:04:01 No. Hardly any adherence there. Penetration's gonna be a real problem for that one too. So now we're gonna jump to a deposition agent. Okay. 00:04:12 So fungicide applications, drift control, those sorts of things. Again, That's a lot like crop oil, a lot 00:04:23 Like crop oil, right? Those deposition agents are designed to control droplet size penetration into the canopy. 00:04:29 It's great if you can get it into the canopy, but if it doesn't go into the plant, what have we really accomplished with your, 00:04:35 your foliar sprays And then this one's just water. When economics are tight, inevitably adjuvants end up on the chopping block trying 00:04:47 to save a dollar here and a dollar there and you want to put don dish soap in or some old diesel fuel that's in the tank behind the shop. 00:04:55 'cause that should do the trick. Right. But this is why we au is an adjuvant and why we should pick the appropriate 00:05:02 adjuvant for your spray. Well we can water's by far the worst. Yeah. But the other technologies don't appear to keep up 00:05:08 with the ZA at all the way it's breaking down the wax. Yep. And so if you look back at this oral wet drop, what you can see is in just the matter of a couple 00:05:16 of minutes, we have loosened the epic cuticular wax on the leaf surface and driven penetration. 00:05:22 And now we're already theoretically in the field moving chemistry systemically in a really narrow window of time. So you know, again, right at Commodity Classic 26 you can 00:05:32 walk up and down this aisle. There's chemical companies, there's foliar fertility companies 00:05:37 and I believe all of the products work, but the farmer needs to handle 'em in the right way. Absolutely. It really appears here 00:05:43 to handle 'em in the right way. You need to correct adjuvant and I've talked many times on extreme ag about the 00:05:48 problems we have with our water. It's such low hanging fruit to treat that water appropriately to make sure the foliar 00:05:54 and the chemicals work. And it sure appears right now that ZA will help. I look forward to the trials we're gonna do this 00:05:59 summer to see if I can approve. We have a heavy, heavy foliar application on my farm. I've gone, most of the fertility on my farm is done in the R 00:06:06 stages with the helicopter, with the drone, you know, at post cam. Things like that. This is highly important to me 00:06:11 'cause I need to get my fertility in the plant. Absolutely. Efficiency's The goal. Efficiency's the goal. 00:06:16 My biggest problem of course is water hemp when we're talking leads. Let's get the chemical into the plant. Yep. 00:06:21 Let's kill the water hemp. Yep. And get it systemically into the can canopy. Right. It's one thing to get chemistry in, 00:06:27 but to get it everywhere down to the root tip so that your kill is more thorough and long Lasting. How many times have 00:06:32 we seen that water hemp plant? It just gets mad a lot. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Let's kill the water hit plant. Absolutely. 00:06:38 Well I look forward to this summer, Derek. 00:06:40.055 --> 00:06:42.565