Canada
March 15, 2011
Corn growers in Canada finally have a fungicide to protect their crop from leaf diseases as well as the quality-robbing mycotoxin DON. Proline® is now registered to control more diseases in corn than any product on the market and is the only fungicide that protects against fusarium, the fungal disease that produces DON.
In addition to suppressing fusarium and gibberella ear rots, Proline also controls rusts, eyespot, grey leaf spot and northern blight. By controlling these diseases, growers will also see increased yield and quality.
“Keeping corn crops disease-free with fungicide applications is becoming a best management practice of corn growers in the U.S.,” says Greg Good, Portfolio Manager Row Crops at Bayer CropScience. “Now that Canadian corn growers have access to a fungicide like Proline to confront the worst diseases in corn, industry watchers anticipate growers will take up the challenge of producing the cleanest grain possible with the new technology.”
Long recognized as a serious problem in corn, DON affects the quality of grain for a number of end uses. In feedstuffs, DON causes a host of troubles for livestock producers, including feed refusal and reproductive issues. DON also creates problems for the by-product streams of a number of industrial processes. For example, low levels of DON in grain off the combine produce much higher levels in the by-products of the ethanol extraction process.
In a study published in the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture, it was estimated that 2.1 million tonnes of distiller’s dried grains with soluble (DDGS) were produced in Canada as a by-product of ethanol production. This by-product can be an affordable source of protein and energy in animal feed. The ethanol extraction process, however, concentrates DON levels in DDGS by a factor of three, rendering the by-product unfit for livestock feed and creating a waste disposal issue for ethanol producers.
“Using and adding value to this by-product may be essential to the sustainability of the fuel ethanol business in Canada,” says Luc Bourgeois, Research and Development Manager at Bayer CropScience. “Preventing fusarium infections in the first place can help address this serious corn industry issue.”
Proline is available from retailers across Canada. The full product label is available here.
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