Do not Just Look at the Herbicide Trade Name Look at the Active Ingredient

In recent years there has tended to more remixing of current active ingredients in new premixes rather than the introduction of new chemistry due to the competitive nature of today's herbicide market. Thus from year to year a product with a simliar trade name may have a very different mix of active ingredients and/or concentrations that could change there use and precautions.

An article in The Bulletin from the University of Illinois by Aaron Hager highlight the active ingredients from several common herbicides. He made the following observation:

A brief examination of names of herbicides currently on the market demonstrates that several active ingredients are marketed under more than one trade name/formulation. For example, the active ingredient isoxaflutole is marketed as Balance Pro and Balance Flexx. Even though the active ingredient in the two products is identical and the trade names are very similar, several important differences between the products mean that their use patterns are not necessarily interchangeable.

Other differences among the various products also become apparent. Resolve DF and Resolve SG are different formulations of rimsulfuron that contain the same amount of active ingredient per unit of formulated product, so application rates are identical. However, while Resolve Q also contains rimsulfuron, it has thifensulfuron as well. Both Flexstar and Flexstar GT can be applied postemergence to glyphosate-resistant soybean varieties, but only Flexstar can be applied to non-GMO soybean varieties.

The full article can be found at http://www.ipm.uiuc.edu/bulletin/article.php?id=1095 provides a table of product formulations and active ingredients applied at label rates.