Advanta Seeds has launched igrowth, a proprietary non-GMO imidazoline-tolerant trait in grain sorghum.
The igrowth commercial launch was held in Argentina where growers, agronomists and distributors had the opportunity to share their experience after testing igrowth hybrids in the past season.
“We were very pleased with feedback from growers, although weather conditions last season were not favorable to demonstrate the full yield potential,” said Pablo De La Fuente, the company’s lead for the South America market. “All the growers were satisfied with the excellent weed control of igrowth.”
The launch included a workshop in which early adopters discussed crop performance in different environmental conditions.
“The benefit of the new technology was seen from the start,” said Leandro Abdelhadi, an early adopters from the Buenos Aires province. “In the plot with traditional sorghums, we had to deal with grass scapes with no chance of rescue treatments, even after applying maximum herbicide rates. That affected yield. With igrowth technology, weed control was total, and we would have been able to spray over the top if necessary.”
Igrowth technology and the herbicide-tolerante sorghum traits were discovered in 2007 by the Advanta R&D Team in Argentina. Since then, it has been developed and tested in various environments for performance and yield. It is a non-GMO technology developed by mutagenesis, so no DNA from other species or plants were introduced to the sorghum genome.
Igrowth is the world’s first commercial weed control technology for sorghum and has now been successfully launched by Advanta Seeds in Argentina and Australia. The technology is currently being introduced in many big sorghum regions, such as the United States, Mexico, Brazil and other South American countries as well as some of the Eastern European regions.
Advanta Seeds is a part of the UPL Group. For more information, click here.
