Responses of Dry Bean to Biostimulants Added to Postemergence Herbicides

Abstract

The effect of biostimulants such as Crop Booster and RR SoyBooster on dry bean under Ontario environmental conditions is not known. A total of 12 field experiments (6 in cranberry bean “Etna” and 6 in white bean “OAC REX”) were conducted at two locations (Ridgetown and Exeter, Ontario, Canada) to evaluate the effect of Crop Booster and RR SoyBooster on visible injury, shoot dry weight, height and yield of cranberry and white bean. Visible injury ranged from 0% to 7.3% in white bean and 0% to 9.4% in cranberry bean with quizalofop-p-ethyl, bentazon, fomesafen, bentazon plus fomesafen, imazethapyr and imazethapyr plus bentazon alone or in combination with Crop Booster and RR SoyBooster. The addition of Crop Booster or RR SoyBooster to herbicides evaluated had no significant effect on shoot dry weight, height, seed moisture content and yield of white or cranberry bean except with the addition of RR SoyBooster to quizalofop-p-ethyl which increased height 3.7% and the addition of the Crop Booster to bentazon which decreased shoot dry weight 12% and the addition of Crop Booster to bentazon plus fomesafen which increased shoot dry weight 17% in white bean. Based on these results, there were minimal effects from the addition of Crop Booster or RR SoyBooster to commonly used herbicides in white and cranberry bean.