JEREMY DORMINEY
AMBROSE, GA
Situation
For the first time in several years, Jeremy Dorminey of Ambrose, Ga., decided to shift acres from peanuts to corn. He contracted his corn crop nearly a year in advance of planting to take advantage of favorable prices. With a strong profit potential locked in, Dorminey wanted a production program that would maximize yields, and he recognized that disease is always a concern on irrigated acres.
“With irrigation, there is a real high yield potential and the fungicide—it just wouldn’t make any sense not to put it out. You are spending so much money on this crop, this is one thing you can do for a real good insurance package,” said Dorminey. And regardless of corn prices, said Dorminey, a fungicide will pay for itself. “I’d rather make 230 bushels (with a fungicide) than 170 bushels,” he added.
Dorminey asked his local crop protection dealer Ashley Gillis at Griffins Warehouse for recommendations. “Ashley presented me with the information about FORTIX™ Fungicide and suggested ‘Why don’t you try a little bit?” related the grower.
FORTIX is a combination of fluoxastrobin—a fast-acting strobilurin and flutriafol—the most residual and systemic of all triazoles. The complimentary modes of action provide broad spectrum activity against a variety of plant diseases.
What really caught Dorminey’s interest is the FORTIX is “One and Done” strategy. FORTIX is is the only fungicide that can provide full-season fungicide benefits with just one early application.
It was clear that the dealer believed in what FORTIX is promised to do, concluded Dorminey. Based on the dealer’s confidence and wanting one-pass fungicide coverage, Dorminey elected to apply FORTIX is to every acre, with the exception of a test strip. “I knew that if I had to spray again, all I would have lost is about $2 per acre. F FORTIX is was worth the $2,000 risk,” he determined.
Solution
Dorminey and Gillis worked with their local Cheminova rep. Ricky Lord to determine the correct application rate for FORTIX is. When the corn was “about waist-high,” Dorminey contracted for FORTIX is to be applied by air to every acre, except one thin test strip.
The applicator sprayed FORTIX is at a rate of 5 oz. per acre and the fungicide was combined with a maintenance application of micronutrients. “If I’d had one of the newer high-boy sprayers,” noted Dorminey, “I could have gone in with my own equipment and I could have saved that expense.”
Almost all of these fungicide applications are done by airplane, said Dorminey, “and you know, we have 1,100 acres of corn. You are talking about spending another $7,700 to have the chemical put out, yet alone the cost of the chemical. Dorminey figured that one-pass control automatically saved $7,700 if he’d selected a different fungicide with less than season-long control.
In corn, FORTIX provides season-long control against Gray Leaf Spot, Southern and Northern Corn Leaf Blight, Northern Corn Leaf Spot, Anthracnose Leaf Blight, Common and Southern Rust and Eyespot.
During much of the summer, heavy rains pushed up from the Gulf Coast to hit Dorminey’s South Georgia fields. “We had a lot of cloudy days and Southern Rust was one disease that popped up here pretty strong. The other one would be leaf blight,” he said.
Dorminey counted on the FORTIX is —with just one application—to work. “We don’t like to take any risk,” he noted.
Success
“Yields were great,” said Dorminey. On his best fields, he picked about 230 bushels per acre. As for the test strip, the grower noted, “There was about a 30 to 35 bushel per acre difference in what we treated and what we didn’t.”
Added Dorminey, “You are not really going to get trashed with disease other than maybe one out of every 20 years. That’s a worst case scenario.” As far as disease pressure, this wasn’t a bad season, he stressed. “But there are advantages to fungicide—to having it out there and having it in the plant’s system,” he notes. “It helps the plant. If a fungicide is going to make me even 20 more bushels, then I’ll spray it.