Fruit growers and their advisers are reminded to take the utmost care and choose the right adjuvant before applying chemical thinners and plant growth regulators (PGRs) in their pome and stone fruit orchards this season.
The advice comes from Orville Hildebrand, research and development manager with 7 Worlds Ag, who says while PGRs and fruit thinners o er high potential payback, they are costly investments which are also challenging to apply correctly.
“It can be di cult for growers to obtain consistent results with these products, because there are tight windows for applying them correctly and product uptake is strongly influenced by temperature and drying times,” he says.
“The good news is specialty adjuvants such as Pomade and Gro-Wet are high performing adjuvants that help PGRs and thinners to deliver more consistent results and reduce the risk of damaging sensitive, high value crops like apples and stone fruit.”
Orville explains Pomade reduces the drying times of spray droplets, while increasing the spread of spray droplets without forcing them to penetrate the fruit surface.is enhances the uptake of thinners and other PGRs, while being crop safe even at the most sensitive crop stages.
Meanwhile, Gro-Wet is specially designed to enhance coverage of apple flowers with Thin-It blossom desiccant, allowing the use of lower water rates while maintaining efficacy even under challenging conditions.
“Gro-Wet is carefully balanced to provide coverage and achieve consistent drying across the canopy without accumulating on leaf margins that can cause marginal leaf burn under slow drying conditions.”
With specially designed performing adjuvants such as Pomade and Gro-Wet, Orville says pome and stone fruit growers can avoid the problems associated with more general surfactants, most notably fruit marking.
“As fruit growers know only too well, the timing of thinners and PGRs is highly sensitive, but choosing the wrong surfactant, sticker or super spreading product may force chemistry into fruit lenticles, adhere products to fruit surfaces or allow unwanted protectant fungicides or fertilisers into the fruit skin,” he says.
“Other problems can arise because thinners and PGRs can have a very short half-life on the plant surface, so rapid uptake is essential to achieving the best results.
“But under rapid drying conditions, spray solutions can dry prematurely, leaving the chemistry on the plant surface unable to function and rapidly degrading.
“Some surfactants can even reduce drying times further by spreading the spray solution too thinly across the plant surface, so they are ineffective.
“That’s why we recommend Pomade and Gro-Wet which are specially designed to deliver crop safe, effective and consistent results from your investment in thinning and PGR technology for your crop.”
