Joint action of some usable important broadleaf herbicides in sugar beet

Introduction: The assessment of the effect of mixtures could be based on various concepts whether we work within toxicology, pharmacology or weed control. Combinations of certain herbicides can give better weed control than use of the individual herbicide alone and/or loss of weed control when use of certain other herbicides in combination. Predicting the joint action of mixtures is extremely difficult, unless the compounds are known to interact at the same site of action. These most common methods to analyze the joint action of herbicide mixtures are the Additive Dose Model (ADM) or the Multiplicative Survival Model (MSM). The ADM assumes the two compounds have similar modes of action (do not interact) in the receiver plant, i.e. effective doses of each component will not change by mixing. ADM has been widely accepted as a valid method to estimate joint action of mixtures sharing the same or similar action mechanisms in the receiver plant. MSM has been reported to yield more accurate results for mixture toxicity than ADM do when the components exhibited different or dissimilar modes of action in the receiver plant. ADM or Concentration Addition (CA) is used here to test for deviation of additivity of doses using the ADM isoboles as reference; any deviation from the ADM is characterized by antagonism when the efficacy of a mixture is lower than predicted by the reference model and synergistic when the efficacy is higher than predicted. Materials and Methods: In order to determine joint action of some usable important broadleaf herbicides in sugar beet, six experiments were conducted at the research glasshouse in Faculty of Agriculture, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Iran. The plants were sprayed with seven doses of commercial formulation of desmedipham + phenmedipham + ethofumesate (Betanal Progress- OF®, 427 g a.i. L-1, Tragusa, Spain), chloridazon (Pyramin®, 1361 g a.i. L-1, BASF, Germany), clopyralid (Lontrel®, 149 g a.i. L-1, Golsam, Gorgan, Iran) either alone or in binary fixed-ratio mixtures of the three herbicides. The ratio of the herbicides of the binary mixtures were chosen with the aim of obtaining a contribution to the overall effect of the two herbicides of 100:0, 75:25, 50:50, 25:75, and 0:100 for seven-mixture-ratio experiments. Spraying was performed by overhead trolley sprayer (Matabi 121030 Super Agro 20 litre sprayer), 8002 flat-fan nozzle at 300 kPa and a spray volume of 200 Lha-1. The plants were treated at 21 days (at the four- to six-true leaf stage) after planting. Dose-response curves were estimated by fitting a three log-logistic dose–response model against dose for ED50 and ED90 response levels. ADM was used as reference model of joint action with their equations. As the results with the herbicide mixtures originate from up to twelve separate experiments it was necessary to standardize the x- and y-axes so that the ED50, ED80 and ED90 doses of the herbicides applied separately were always fixed to 1. Results Discussion: The results showed that mixtures of chloridazon and clopyralid were less phytotoxic than predicted by ADM particularly in Amaranthus retroflexus at ED50 and ED80 response levels. These binary mixtures of herbicides were either followed ADM or less than predicted by ADM in Solanum nigrum. In contrast, mixture of desmedipham + phenmedipham + ethofumesate and clopyralid was synergistic in both species. Whereas desmedipham + phenmedipham + ethofumesate and chloridazon binary mixture was synergistic in Solanum nigrum to followed according to ADM in Amaranthus retroflexus. Conclusion: The present study has revealed that mixtures of photosystem II, lipid biosynthesis and auxin inhibitor herbicides either followed ADM, or performed better than predicted by ADM, i.e. applying mixtures of these herbicides will not result in an excessive use of herbicide compared to applying the herbicides separately. In contrast, mixtures of chloridazon and clopyralid were trend antagonistic and the two herbicides should not be applied in mixture.