Weeds AR Wild Series, S2 Ep11. Rice Weed Control Advice from Louisiana

Weeds AR Wild Series, S2 Ep11. In this week’s episode, Dr. Tommy Butts is joined by Dr. Connor Webster, Rice Extension Weed Specialist at Louisiana State University, to discuss how the 2022 rice crop is shaping up, water-seeding advice, and other tips and concerns for both Arkansas and Louisiana rice growers.

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Weeds AR Wild Series, Season 2 Episode 11. 
Title: Weeds AR Wild Series, S2 Ep11. Rice Weed Control Advice from Louisiana
Date:  April 27, 2022


Tommy: Welcome to the Weeds AR Wild podcast series as a part of Arkansas Road Crops Radio. My name is Tommy Butts, Extension Weed Scientist for the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture. And today, joining me, I actually have Dr. Connor Webster, Rice Extension Weed Specialist at Louisiana State University. We're going to chat about a few different topics today. You know, just how the rice crop is shaping up down there in Louisiana. And with our conditions in Arkansas, I'm hopefully going to get some water seeding advice from Connor and then a few other tips and concerns that he might be seeing down there that might translate up to us as our season's just kind of getting underway. Before we get into all that though, I just wanted to turn it over and let Connor introduce himself. Thanks for joining me today, Connor.

Connor: Hey, thanks for having me on. This is my first podcast, so I'm pretty excited to be doing this. Like you said, I'm the rice weed scientist for LSU Ag Center. I actually have a three-way appointment – research, extension, and teaching with research being the majority of my appointment. I'm looking forward to it.

Tommy: Awesome. Like I said, thanks again for joining me. The first thing I just wanted kind of to get into with you is, up here in Arkansas, man, we keep catching rain after rain after rain. We'll have about three days where it'll maybe finally dry out and boom, another rain. So we're not very far, as far as planting goes. We're pretty far behind. But what's Louisiana looking like? How's your planting progress so far and how’s your year just kind of shaping up overall?

Connor: Yeah, so we're probably the exact opposite, especially here in the south part of the state. We had a relatively dry winter, so we had a lot of ground that was prepped early. A lot of growers got in the ground early. We have some people that will start planting mid-February, but that's not always the case. But a lot of people started getting in the ground around the 1st of March. But really, that rice set in the ground for probably three to four weeks because we were so dry and we had cold temperatures, so that rice wouldn't necessarily germinate. And so we had quite a few people that were starting to get a little worried about that. But everything started to pick up, started to get a little bit more rain, better temperatures. Now, most people are around three to five leaf rice, right now. And really, we're probably getting ready to give it a flood. So yeah, that's about where we're at right now. We're probably 80% planted so far with the 20% being in the north part of the state. They're kind of in the situation that Arkansas is in. It's been pretty wet recently and really, they're trying to decide probably if they're going to plant rice or soybeans or what, still.

Tommy: Well, now that we lost our whole Arkansas listenership, since you guys are doing a lot better than we are. [laughter] Let's see if we can continue on. I'm just kidding. So, I mean, that's good to hear, though. I'm glad to hear that y'all are at least moving forward and having good luck so far. I'm hoping here. We got another couple rain chances in the forecast, but I'm hoping it starts clearing up and we can plant a whole bunch in a hurry. So hopefully we're moving in the right direction here soon. Are there any new major weeds or control issues that you're seeing so far down there or anything that you're really battling that we should maybe be on the lookout for up here in Arkansas this year or even moving forward?

Connor: This year, from speaking with most people, we've had a lot of Command and Sharpen go out PRE. So right now, we've got pretty good weed control. I've gotten a few calls about alligator weed, a few calls about some Juncus species and a lot of that goes with that water seeded rice system, where we've been holding water in the winter so that you have a little bit more aquatic weight pressure. One new weed that's kind of on the horizon for us is in the genus Fimbristylis, and that's actually in the sedge family. So what happens with that is a lot of people mistake it for a rice flatsedge and our Permits or Gambits don't provide very good control or any control of Fimbristylis. So a lot of times they'll misidentify it as a flatsedge. And then you put the flood on, and you’re like, “What? Wait, why do I have this flatsedge still out here?” It's not flatsedge, it’s Fimbristylis. So, the big difference is that the Fimbristylis grows in a fan, whereas a flatsedge is 3-rank, but yeah so we're kind of...

Tommy: It's kind of more like a cattail than -ish, with a with the fan type orientation.

Connor: Yeah but it's a lot smaller. 

Tommy: Yeah, okay.

Connor: It’s about the size of a flatsedge, but yeah the growth habit would be similar to that. Really, that's kind of been on the rise in the past maybe two years. Something that we've been getting a few more calls about. That's something that I'm going to be diving into once I get that first call of, “Hey, I think I have Fimbristylis.”

Tommy: Yeah, we're dealing with sedges a lot up here too. We actually just had a survey, I guess it's been fall of 2020, and sedges have moved up to like our number 2 to number 3 weed in rice up here. Like it's insane.  We're battling yellow nutsedge, rice flatsedge is an animal because we have so much ALS resistance anymore. And then we also have one that's popped up kind of like what you're saying too. It's white margin flatsedge, but it's where people were, you know – it looks a lot like flat sage when it's young. And so people are identifying it as just rice flatsedge and the Permits, Gambits, all those ALS’s of the world aren't killing it, and it's just blown through the top and taken some of our rice down. So we're battling kind of the same issue just a different species. But that same that same sedge junk is really eating our lunch right now, too.

Connor: Yeah, it can get pretty frustrating.

Tommy: Yeah, that's for sure. And especially, like you said, when you're going to flood and you think you got it, and then all of a sudden it's blown up through the top of the canopy, that's the worst time to see it.

Connor: So yeah, I've heard of a couple of instances where Rogue has done a pretty good job on it as a salvage, like once you've gotten your flood. So, Rogue has to have a flood in the system, especially a deep flood. They'll jack that flood up and then put Rogue out, and it seems to do a good job on the Fimbristylis.

Tommy: Well, that's good. That's good. I know we've heard some reports that that’s working on our white margin as well. We need to do a little bit more research on it, but yeah, Rogue seems like a great option to try and battle back some of those sedges that blow through us on post-flood. So that's a good point to bring that up. Thank you. Just another question too, how are Louisiana farmers so far dealing with high herbicide prices and availability issues? Have you heard any major availability concerns on the rice herbicide front?

Connor: As far as availability, the two most difficult ones to get are Roundup, which we can get it. It’s just expensive. Probably the most common price that I've heard is around $58 a gallon, so that hurts a little bit. But the other one is Basagran. We're pretty short on Basagran, which I think Basagran is kind of short every year. But those are the two big ones. Other than those, we've been able to get our hands on pretty much everything that we need so far.

Tommy: Okay, that's good to know about the Basagran though, because I mean, we just said sedges are one of our main ones we've been battling, and Basagran has been one of our main go-to’s the past couple of years. Knowing that that's maybe a little shorter, a little bit tougher to get our hands on is good to know. I've heard rumblings of that, but nothing concrete. So that’s good to know. That’s good advice there that any Arkansas listeners, if you need it.

Connor: Another option for if you can't get Basagran, is make sure you're getting Sharpen out PRE. That'll really help with your ALS resistant flatsedge.

Tommy: Yeah definitely, and Bolero. Bolero has been a really good one for us too. Now it gets to be a little expensive and stuff. But Bolero has been a real good flatsedge residual material as well for us. So and if you can't, you know Loyant comes with its whole bag of tricks too. But if you can get Loyant out POST, it's normally been pretty good on most of our sedges as well. So that's another option too. Well, cool. Is there anything else as far as the year goes you wanted to mention, or is it, you know, those kind of…?

Connor: That’s kind of about it. One thing or a couple of things that I've heard, seems to be I don't know if you would call it a shortage, but not enough Highcard to cover all the Max-Ace seed. So they've kind of pulled Max-Ace seed back to make sure that they have the Highcard herbicide for that technology, which I'm sure we'll get into that here in a little bit.

Tommy: Well, I was going to say, yeah, that's perfect segway into what we might as we'll talk about next. Because I've heard the same thing up here, right – is that there was just not enough Highcard to go around, and that RiceTec was trying to pull a little bit of their Max-Ace seed back and things like that. That was going to be one of my main things to chat about was the fact that there is a very specific label language there, right? Provisia rice gets Provisia herbicide, Max-Ace Rice gets Highcard herbicide. And more than just labeling reasons, it's really important because of safety issues, right? Rice safety issues. And so Highcard herbicide has a safener in it, and it safens Max-Ace rice a little bit more to that quizalofop herbicide. And you don't want to be crisscrossing because you can end up with some pretty severe injury. And I know you had a field of this just recently, and so I just wanted to turn it over and let you chat about that that situation and any details you want to mention or anything else specific about why we need to be following those rules of “Highcard goes on Max-Ace.”

Connor: That's going to be very important that you make sure you're putting Highcard herbicide on Max-Ace and matching up your technologies right. Because Highcard has that safener in there for a reason. And I've seen it firsthand. There was a field here in South Louisiana where it was actually an accident. They were spraying a bunch of Provisia rice with Provisia. And then there was a field that was Max-Ace. The person spraying was told, “Hey, skip this field with a Provisia herbicide.” And he just kept on rolling and sprayed that Max-Ace field with the Provisia, and just a rough number and walking through the field, probably killed 90% of the stand of rice. So, this is definitely something you're not going to want to do. You're not going to want to save the money by putting Provisia out on Max-Ace rice. Because it's going to end up biting you. It might not bite you every time, but with the weather conditions like they've been, kind of cool and wet, it's definitely going to increase the chances of you injuring or killing that Max-Ace rice. With this technology, the ACCase resistant rice, you're always going to have this chance for injury. So that’s not one of the things that you want to push, is using the unsafened herbicide on the Max-Ace rice.

Tommy: And it doesn't matter whether it's the variety or the hybrid or anything there, right? I know we have a lot more variety out there, but. 

Connor: Right. 

Tommy: It's Max-Ace rice you use Highcard on.

Connor: Yeah. It’s Max-Ace rice. There's not a whole lot of the Max-Ace hybrid. I've seen one field of Max-Ace of hybrid. But the majority of it's going to be the inbred line.

Tommy: And then I don't know if I missed it. Did you say what size that rice was when it got sprayed, too?

Connor: It was about two to three-leaf.

Tommy: So right in that first – window, then. Yeah, okay.

Connor: It was about 13.9 fluid ounces per acre.

Tommy: OK, yeah.

Connor: Normal rate for the Provisia on Provisia and even the Highcard on the Max-Ace, because they both have the same 15-and-a-half-ounce recommended rate.

Tommy: Yeah. And if you haven't seen some of the pictures, Connor shared some of this on his Twitter. So, make sure to check that out and follow him and stuff too because the pictures were pretty – it was a scary sight. Let's just say that. I mean it's - 

Connor: Well when I walked out the, the person who sent me to the field, he didn't go with me, but I pulled up and I knew exactly what field it was, walked out there and immediately started pulling growing points out. One of the neat things which I didn't post this picture, some of the high spots were still green, whereas low spots were completely carcasses. They were completely dead. So that just shows you how important soil moisture is with these herbicides. So having good soil moisture can always help with the activity for controlling weeds.

Tommy: That's a great point too. Yeah, I appreciate you bringing that up because that's kind of one of the things we stress too – is the moisture and how much on both sides, right? That can improve our weed control but also really be detrimental to our rice injury. If something goes wrong too. 

Connor: Right.

Tommy: So yeah, those cool wet conditions and spraying Provisia on Max-Ace, we're going to run into some issues there. So, glad you were able to share your experience there. Just to try and stave off any of those instances in Arkansas.

Connor: Hopefully I don't get called to too many more of those.

Tommy: Yeah. [laughter] I always say that every year and I still get called to a bunch, I swear. So hopefully we can stave off some of them at least though. Have you seen any issues – just staying on the herbicide traits front – have you seen any issues on the Clearfield/FullPage side of things? Any injury, any weed control issues down there?

Connor: No, not this year. Last year we got a call on Clearfield Jasmine injury from Newpath, and we were convinced that they mixed up the seed. So, we ran some analysis on the plant tissue and it came back Clearfield Jasmine. So that was one of those rare instances where we got a Clearfield injury. We haven't gotten a Clearfield injury call in who knows how many years. But last year was just one of those years where it was cool and wet and cloudy all the time. So, the herbicide or the plant, the target rice, well not the target rice. The cultivated rice just wasn't metabolizing that herbicide out of the plant like it should have. So, the herbicide stayed in the plant longer and stayed active. So we picked up a little bit more injury last year than a normal year.

Tommy: Now, I'm glad you bring that up again too. Just with the weather conditions we've had this year, who knows what we might see now? We should not expect on the FullPage front, because of that – kind of having the two parents for resistance. We really have not seen any ALS injury pop up on those FullPage hybrids. But, there's always a chance – you get cool wet conditions, like you said, real cloudy weather and then some of our other Clearfield technologies that are still available out there. Just be prepared. If this is the weather conditions we have through the year and we really overload it with a bunch of ALS chemistries, you never know. You probably still have a chance to see some of that, too. So awesome. Well, outside of those herbicide traits, those were the main couple of things I wanted to hit on there. There are a few other things that I know that your weed science group has researched down there, and I just wanted to get your advice and your takes on some of these things. So, one of the first things I know you and your lab down there have done a bunch of work on some different herbicide antagonism things, right? And what's good and what's not good and things we should watch out for and all that kind of stuff. So, I just wanted to of kind of turn it over to you and let us know. And this could be across different trait technologies. If it's within a specific trait technology that's great too. But just kind of fill us in and give us a few tips on some of those antagonism things that we need to watch out for.

Connor: Yeah. So most of our antagonism that we deal with is the Provisia herbicde, or what will be the Highcard herbicide. I mean, really that that whole group of herbicides, all your ACCase inhibiting herbicides. Your Group 1 herbicides historically have been antagonized when they're applied in a mixture. We've done a lot of research looking at what herbicides antagonize and possible ways to overcome that antagonism. Best way to overcome it is to apply Provisia by itself. But some of the herbicides that I always tell people to stay away from would be – the main one would be to stay away from Stam. I've seen it completely tie up Provisia. Stay away from stuff like Regiment or Grasp. Even 2,4D can be pretty bad. Some of the herbicides, I say – if you're going to mix with Provisia, I would use a Permit or Gambit or a Loyant. Those seem to be the least antagonistic when mixing with that Group 1 class of herbicides. But I tell everybody you're probably still going to get antagonism. Even if you don't, you might next time. Antagonism has always been kind of finicky. It's hard to get the same results year after year. So, if you're going to mix, be ready for a little bit antagonism, even if you don't see it. If you had a run-in, check next to it and you probably wouldn't see it. So at least if at all possible, get at least one application of Provisia out by itself, because we need to really preserve this technology and make sure that we don't have red rice going to seed where it can out-cross with the Provisia system like we had with Clearfield Rice. Another one that we've kind of been looking at is Gambit and Stam antagonism on alligator weed control. This is kind of a new instance with the Gambit just going to market, I think in 2018. For more research, we broke the Gambit out into the Permit and the Peak, and it seems like the Peak is causing more antagonism than the Permit is on the alligator weed control when you mix it with Stam.

Tommy: I gotcha.

Connor: Its mainly alligator weed. We've seen it slow down activity on stuff like spreading dayflower, but our main concern is the alligator weed with that mixture.

Tommy: And that's mainly, you said, the Stam and Gambit, is that right? 

Connor: Yeah. 

Tommy: Okay, and back to the Provisia too. Did you say have you messed around with Basagran mix in there? Have you seen anything there?

Connor: I haven't really messed around with it. I mean, there's always the opportunity to tie it up, no matter what you’re mixing with it. Seems like the soil applied residual herbicides are a little bit better too. So, like if you mix Provisia and Command together, you wouldn't necessarily get as much antagonism because it's more of a soil applied herbicide. But really anything that you mix, be ready for a little bit of antagonism. Just know that there's an opportunity for that.

Tommy: Now, that's good advice. And like you said too, it really emphasizes the point, right? Of things that we've been preaching too. The sequentials are key, still in those systems. You want to make sure you're using your two shots for sure. You want to make sure you’re using full rates. You know, that we're not cutting rates because you can see it even worse if you cut a rate down where you're going to have that antagonism.

Tommy
So that's important. And I know our rec, and I don't know the same for you, but our rec is always to try and do those mixtures in the first shot if you can. And then your pre-flood shot basically is the Provisia or the Highcard all by itself to like you said, basically finish it out, make sure we don't have anything going into the flood.

Connor: That's right. And you if you mix up right, you can get rid of some of your broad leaf competition as well early on that can potentially cause a yield drag later on in the growing season.

Tommy: Awesome. Would you also expect I mean, we typically always look at like the Provisia and Highcard as – it's a hotter version. But, it's very similar to like the Clinchers and Ricestars of the world. So, would you typically expect a lot of these antagonisms you've seen there to carry over into the Clinchers and the Ricestars of the world, too?

Connor: Yeah. There's always that possibility. That the whole mode of action, you can tie it up. I've tied up some Ricestar before with some mixtures, so there's always room for it. 

Tommy: Awesome. Well, I appreciate that info. That's good info to have. The next thing I wanted to hit on too, just with our wet conditions we've had and we're getting later into the season, I expect a few more of our Arkansas growers to kind of dabble in water-seeding. And normally we're pretty low as far as water-seeding goes, roughly like 5% of our acres or so. And so if we have a few more guys dabbling in it, I was just looking for some of your advice from down there. What percentage right now is Louisiana as far as water-seeding, is it about 50%, 40%?

Connor: We’re 80% drill-seeded, 20% water-seeded right now. 

Tommy: Okay. 

Connor: And that can fluctuate given on the year. We've actually started picking up a little bit more water-seeded acreage, just because if you have a conventional line next to a field of Provisia, if you drift that Provisia onto your conventional line it can be pretty bad. So, if they have a conventional line, say like they have a Jasmine or something on contract that they have to have, they might water-seed instead of using a Provisia system, which I'll kind of get into a little bit of history there. So, before the Clearfield system came to the market, we were the exact opposite. We were about 80% water-seeded, 20% drill-seeded. So Clearfield rice really flipped that complete 180. So, water-seeded production system was mainly used as a cultural way to control red rice. So, you would fly or broadcast your seed into a standing field of water, drop that water off the field, and then let your rice establish a little bit of a root system. And as soon as it picked back up, as soon as that rice picked up and started pegging, you put the flood right back on the field. And that's what we call a pinpoint flood system. So that that water acts as a as a residual herbicide, if you will, to suppress red rice germination. So that’s our main use for it. Whereas in Arkansas, you might be using that as just a way to get seed out there. So really with a water-seeded system, once you get to that three to four-leaf stage, rice stage, then you're pretty much managing it like a drill-seeded production system. So, I don't know – if  people in Arkansas start to water-seed, they'll probably just stick with a delayed flood system. That would be my best guess as what many of the producers would do up there.

Tommy: I guess just as far as the herbicide front goes in trying to get residuals out, that's a lot of the questions I get. You know, what can we spray and when can we spray it and that kind of thing. You know, can we spray the Command out front before we would ever bring up the flood to water-seed? Or is it smarter to save it for once it's pipped, kind of thing, in applying it then? The Prowls and Boleros of the world, what do those look like? Just kind of give us a tidbit on timings in which residual herbicides are good and when to hit them, kind of thing.

Connor: So, the Command can go out before the flood, before you establish your seeding flood. But there's always room for a little bit more fido's, a little bit more bleaching – once your rice start growing. And what we try to tell people is to broadcast your seed, drop the water, let the rice start standing up, you know, get a good peg to it. And then about 24 hours before your pinpoint flood, put your Command out. Really with all these herbicides mainly, except maybe Sharpen, you need to avoid putting herbicide directly on the seed exposed on the ground. That's where you can pick up a lot of injury. I did some work with Loyant and Gambit and you definitely don't want to put Loyant and Gambit directly on the seed just sitting on the surface. You want to wait to at least one true leaf and get a good root system established. Sharpen is one of those ones that you can put out directly on the seed. But I wouldn't go much higher than an ounce. Then you'll start picking up some injury. As far as Bolero and Prowl go, if I could warn y’all about one thing it would be Prowl. So you need to wait until you get at least four good leaves, three to four good leaves before you put Prowl out on water-seeded rice. Because if you go too early, say if you go at that pegging timing, you won't get a very good root system. The roots will start bottle brushing and being stubby. And then when you go to put your flood on the field, it'll just pick the rice right up out of the soil and you'll have a whole stand of rice floating on the soil surface. So you need to really be mindful with Prowl and how early you're trying to push it. So I wouldn't push it too early. Stay around the three to four leaf timing, but with that you kind of lose your best window of opportunity for control with Prowl. So I don't necessarily see Prowl as the best fit. And let's say you got some Command down up front and you're suppressing weeds and then you came back at that four-leaf time and with a little bit of Prowl. Bolero, it needs to be at least two good leaves before you put Bolero out. And there's some wording on the Bolero label, so if you're going to use Bolero and water-seeded rice, make sure you're reading the label. There's some wording about soil preparation and having a well- drained field. So be mindful of that label.

Tommy: That's excellent info. I appreciate that, Connor. That's really good pieces of advice for our growers. So, I'm glad to hear all of that. That's great. Is there anything else, as far as the water-seeding goes, that you think we really need to be on the lookout for or should be following, especially on the weed control front? Anything else specific?

Connor: Yeah, so you need to be mindful of your prepackaged mixtures. So back on the Prowl and the Bolero. If you are putting RiceOne out and you have Prowl in there, you need to follow the recommendation for Prowl, if you're using RiceOne. And same with RiceBeaux. RiceBeaux has Bolero in it, so you need to wait till at least two-leaf rice. So be mindful your prepackaged mixtures and know what herbicides are in your jug.

Tommy: That's awesome. Great advice, Connor. Thank you very much. Last thing as far as other tips, because I know you've done a bunch of research on this down there as well and it's starting to take off a fair amount more up here as well – is doing the herbicide coated on fertilizer, and different herbicides we're looking at, and different application windows and some of those things. Do you have any tips as far as some of those different herbicides? What you've seen is working, what's not working. What’s kind of any best practices, I guess. Anything to give us on that front as well?

Connor: Yeah. So there's pros and cons to it. One of the biggest pros would be reducing drift by putting herbicide on a fertilizer granule, especially with Loyant. I think from talking to some of the consultants and field reps, probably 70 to 80% of our Loyant goes out on fertilizer and the majority of that goes into the flood. So you get a little bit of a double edged sword there. So if you put your urea into the flood, you're going to lose a lot of your nitrogen through volatilization. But it seems to be better for the Loyant to go into the flood on the urea. So, one of the rule of thumbs that we always tell growers, especially with Loyant is to – whatever you're going to spray as a foliar application, add two ounces if you're going to go onto fertilizer. But a real common practice down here is to do an ounce of Gambit and eight ounces of Loyant, and those two products seem to complement each other. So Gambit might be weak on something Loyant is better on, and vice versa. One thing that we've kind of seen the past couple of years is a little bit of residual activity when we're putting Loyant on the fertilizer granule and dropping it into the water. So last year we did a study, kind of like the drift with a tunnel study, putting Dicamba in a flat in the middle of a wind tunnel and using the soybean plant as an indicator. We put three-foot diameter PVC pipe rings out in the field, burned it down with Roundup and then put our flood out, and then put Loyant at four different rates as a foliar spray and on impregnated fertilizer. And the Loyant on the impregnated fertilizer was hands down better from a residual aspect as a foliar spray. And in that we used ducksalad as our indicator. So we have a very good stand of ducksalad. I think it's four ounces of Loyant on a fertilizer at 42 days after treatment. I've still had no ducksalad in those rings, whereas maybe at 14 to 17 days the Loyant on the foliar was breaking in terms of ducksalad control. But with that we just use ducksalad because it's very sensitive to Loyant. So that residual aspect might not always be the same for every weed species. With a barnyard grass or a yellow nutsedge, you're probably not going to get any residual out of that, but you can possibly get a little bit of residual on like a rice flatsedge or a joint vetch or something like that. So that's something we're going to look into a little bit more this year, looking at what's going on, trying to figure out why we're getting more residual on the fertilizers. We're going to do it on dry ground and the flood and do different rates and timings of floods. So I'm really interested to see what we can figure out there.

Tommy: Yeah, that's going to be real interesting because we're looking a lot too at the impregnating, or I shouldn't say impregnating – coating on fertilizer. In particular, like we talked about earlier, the sedge problems that are eating our lunch. And Loyant still being so good on those, it's a great option to try and add another tool in our toolbox, to be able to drop that in the flood and take out some of those sedges still. And it seems to be working pretty well. Like I said, as long as we can get it coated and get it dropped in right, it seems to be working really well at knocking out some of those annual sedges still, which is great. That and Rogue post flood are really about our only two options there as we start to – if Basagran is going to be short and running into issues with Propanil and everything else, we're getting limited on options. So yeah, if you can kind of put Loyant back in that toolbox is a big benefit.

Connor: And being able to put it on the fertilizer is really going to help with drift

Tommy: Yeah.

Connor: And it'll save you a little bit of money on application cost.

Tommy: And so one other question, I guess, on that. Is there a minimum amount of – because most guys are going to be using urea, right? And so is there a minimum amount of urea that you can do some of these on? You know, can you do 50 pounds? If we're going to be dropping it into the flood like that, do you need to be at 100 pounds? What's your normal -- rate there?

Connor: Yeah, I like to see at least 100 – 150 pounds. I mean we haven't done a whole lot of work into the rates of fertilizer but you could kind of translate that into different gallons of water per acre. So the less fertilizer you're putting it on, the less coverage you're going to get. So, we haven't done a whole lot of work into that, but you don't want to get too high and you don't want to go too low.

Tommy: Well, I just consider some horror stories of it getting too low and then it's too much chemical and it kind of melts the granule and everything else and gets sticky and all that kind of stuff.

Connor: Yeah, there's a fine line there. One of the rules of thumbs is trying not to go over a pint of product per acre on fertilizer, because if you start putting too much liquid on that fertilizer, you're going to start melting it.

Tommy: Awesome. Well, that's great advice. I appreciate that, too. Like I said, we're trying some of those things out up here, and so swapping any good ideas, I appreciate that. That's going to be helpful all the way around. Any other final thoughts or tips that you want to leave for either your Louisiana growers or our Arkansas growers up here?

Connor: I think we about covered. I hope y’all dry out a little bit so y’all can start getting in the ground.

Tommy: Same. I hope so, too. [laughter] Well, I appreciate you joining again, Connor, and all your information. You had some really good tips, I think, for our Arkansas growers moving forward for in the year. Just a few other things that I always like to highlight as far as Arkansas Extension outreach stuff. Make sure to check out our website, www.uaex.uada.edu/weeds. Please visit your local county Extension office or download our MP44 from online. That's a great booklet guide for basically everything herbicide related across our cropping systems. If you haven't signed up for our texting service, please do that. Text weeds, so W-E-E-D-S to (501) 300-8883. And as always, if you just need to get a hold of us or have any questions, please feel free to get a hold of any of us any time. And Connor, do you have any LSU resources that you wanted to put in here as well?

Connor: Yeah, we have a Rice Varieties and Management Tips and that's kind of a top to bottom rice production guide. And then we also have a Louisiana Suggested Chemical Weed Control Guide, and that's for all the crops that we grow in Louisiana. And there's a rice specific section with a bunch of different herbicides and weeds and the do's and don'ts in there. So those are two pretty good publications, and you can find those on the LSU AgCenter website.

Tommy: Awesome. And then the final thing is we just have some “thank you's” we always want to say too. And so I want to say thanks to the Arkansas Rice Research and Promotion Board, as well as USDA-NIFA and USDA-ARS for contributing funding to a lot of our research that that drives our weed control recommendations and also helps just give us some opportunities to do these extension outreach things like we're doing today with this Weeds AR Wild podcast series. So you know, thank you there for that kind of funding. Connor, anything on the LSU front you wanted to mention?

Connor: Yeah. I just want to say thank you to the Louisiana Rice Research Board. Similar to what y’all have an Arkansas. Without them, I wouldn't be able to do what I do, especially being in my first year, they funded me. So that was that was always nice to have some funding starting out. I'm extremely grateful for that. And all of the cooperators that we work with that we do research for, just say thank you.

Tommy: Awesome. Well, once again, thanks for joining us, Connor. I appreciate you taking the time and giving us that information. And I just wanted to say thanks to all our listeners, again, for continuing to join us. And if you ever have any topics, or you want to get a hold of us, like I mentioned, let us know. And with that, thanks for joining us for this episode of the Weeds AR Wild Podcast series on Arkansas Row Crop Radio.

[Music]: Arkansas Row Crops Radio is a production of the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture. For more information, please contact your local county extension agent or visit uaex.uada.edu.