In the picture is a gallon of one of the herbicides I used last weekend on my corn. Normally I use Liberty and Atrazine that has worked really well for a number of years. Liberty can only be used on Liberty Link corn. Liberty Link corn has been genetically modified to tolerate the herbicide. The Atrazine is added at a very low rate because it makes the Liberty perform much better. I had a test plot with a number of corn hybrids and some of them were not Liberty Link. The Liberty would have killed the corn. In addition I have a drainage ditch along one of my corn fields and Atrazine cannot be used along a waterway. So, I used Roundup and Callisto. Roundup is not real effective on some broadleaf weeds like waterhemp and giant ragweed so I added some Callisto. Callisto is manufactured by Syngenta and it was discovered by accident! One of the Scientists with Syngenta was on vacation in Arizona. In the desert he noticed that there were no weeds or plants growing under the Callisto tree. By Minnesota standards it is not a tree but a bush. His first thought was, why are there no weeds growing under the Callisto tree? He took some of the roots back to the lab and isolated a natural herbicide. Yes, the Callisto tree makes it to give it an advantage in the desert where water means survival! Upon further testing he found that it killed broadleaf weeds and was very safe for the corn. In addition it was very friendly to the environment. I guess a scientist's mind works in a different way than most people. One told me once that sometimes the greatest discovery's come from mistakes or by accident!

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