Effective blackgrass control depends on maximising glyphosate applications. Water conditioners protect herbicide performance by neutralising hardness which in turn improves coverage and ensures more active ingredient reaches its target. Many areas of the UK have hard water, containing calcium and magnesium ions that bind to active ingredients in crop protection products and therefore reduce their effectiveness. Water conditioners neutralise these ions, ensuring the herbicide remains fully available for uptake by weeds, reducing resistance of problem weeds such as blackgrass.
Hard water ions such as calcium (Ca²⁺) and magnesium (Mg²⁺) bind to crop protection products such as glyphosate. This can reduce uptake of the herbicide, leading to insufficient doses meeting target, which over time can lead to resistance. By softening hard water, conditioners prevent this from occurring ensuring that the maximum amount of herbicide reaches and stays on target, helping to ensure that weed populations are better controlled.
Blackgrass is already a challenge for UK growers and is becoming an increasing problem as occurrences of glyphosate resistance have been confirmed. In order to combat this, growers must make the most of every application and reduce the number of surviving plants. Water conditioners ensure that more glyphosate reaches the target area, so as much of the blackgrass population as possible is killed off before drilling.
IntraCrop has two water conditioners available in its product range, Inferno and Sentinel. Inferno has performed well in trials and is proven to significantly reduce the number of spray droplets under 100 microns, in turn lesssening spray drift by up to 75%. Additional studies demonstrated less glyphosate drift at 70cm with Inferno compared with glyphosate alone at 50cm (Silsoe trials 2019).
As well as making sure more crop protection products meet target, conditioned water means greater consistency across fields and less risk of patchy control. Fundamentally, using water conditioners with crop protection products will mean avoidance of glyphosate resistance, allowing it to remain a cornerstone of blackgrass management in UK agriculture.
Post-harvest, blackgrass and other grassweeeds can be sprayed off before drilling. Using water conditioners with glyphosate applications at this time helps ensure these applications are as effective as possible, reducing the blackgrass burden and allowing residual chemistry to perform better in-crop.
From a resistance management perspective, water conditioners play an important preventative role. When hard water cations such as Ca²⁺ and Mg²⁺ antagonise glyphosate’s active ingredient, uptake into the weed is reduced. This can lead to a higher proportion of sub-lethal exposures, which in turn increases the probability of resistance. By neutralising these ions, water conditioners help to ensure more of the applied dose reaches the weed and therefore remains effective, minimising weed survivors. This reduction in survival is critical in slowing resistance, particularly in high-risk species such as blackgrass.
Many regions have naturally hard water, but variability can even occur between fields. This means that water conditioning can help to support consistent application of crop protection products.
Inferno and Sentinel are both designed for compatibility with common adjuvants and herbicides but always check product labels and follow best practice mixing order.
No, they can also improve performance of other herbicides that are sensitive to hard water.
Indirectly, yes. By ensuring more product reaches target during application, conditioners reduce the risk of sub-lethal doses reaching weeds, which helps to slow down resistance.
The cost of conditioners is low compared to the potential yield loss from uncontrolled blackgrass.
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