Can Gramoxone Be Sprayed on Peanuts?
Peanuts are an important crop in the American South. Successful weed management highly influences the crop yield because weeds are serious competitors for moisture and nutrients. Crop rotation is crucial to weed management, but a program of herbicide application is also necessary over the growing season. Gramoxone is an herbicide with the active ingredient paraquat. The product was cancelled in 1982, but is now again available for use in peanut and other crop production. Does this Spark an idea?
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Peanut Plants
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Peanuts grow underground on stems that resemble roots. Leafy herbaceous foliage produces flowers that, once pollinated, grow downward into the soil, setting the underground pods. The nuts begin as small nodes on the stems and then swell. Peanuts are actually in the legume family and are not true nuts. Cropped peanuts require early weed management until the plants grow together and form a canopy. Peanuts are sensitive to many herbicides, including Gramoxone.
Weeds in Peanuts
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Peanuts are not at all competitive with weeds. Weed management begins with crop rotation of corn or cotton. These crops can tolerate harsher herbicides, which means you can kill off persistent weeds and seeds before the more sensitive peanut rotation. Cultivation is also used as a non-chemical approach to weed removal. Shallow cultivation has benefits when the plants are small, but deep cultivation can actually encourage weeds. Herbicide use is common but requires proper knowledge and identification of the types of weeds. Herbicides used on peanuts must be registered for use on the crop. There are pre-emergent, pre-plant, post-emergent and "at crack" herbicides. Gramoxone is the latter type, which is used when weeds are an inch or less tall.
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Gramoxone
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Gramoxone is a tank-mix type of herbicide. The herbicide is used to control annual and small broadleaf weeds. It is shown to have some damaging effects on peanuts, but mixing 0.5 to 1 pint of sodium salt of bentazon helps prevent injury or burn from the paraquat. It also improves control of ragweed, prickly sida, spurred anoda and lambsquarters.
Action
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The herbicide is used when weeds have just emerged, before they are 1 inch high but around 28 days after they have cracked through the earth. Gramoxone may be damaging to peanuts because its mode of action is to burn weed leaves. The burn effect may be lessened if the timing of the application is carefully monitored. Humidity and time of day are crucial. Excess heat, drought or dew on the plants increases the incidence of peanut burn. Many other similar herbicides for use on peanuts do not cause burn, including bentazon, 2,4DB, acifluorfin and s-metolachlor.
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References
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