wHen2go smart tool helps protect water resources from OSR herbicides

The wHen2gO Smart Tool considers soil type, drainage and cultivation method when assessing the drainage rate of the soil in the field. By pairing this information with forecasted weather, the tool will then provide an eight-day forecast with a traffic light system indicating the optimum timing of product application for water stewardship.  It will be available to download for all mobile devices via the BASF agricentre website.

At present, the stewardship advice for the two products metazachlor and quinmerac is voluntary. If you are in a drinking water safeguard zone these actives need to be applied no later than the 30th of September and outside of these zones the latest application date is the 15th of October, but only if soil conditions are good and will not result in drain flow. However, by demonstrating use of the wHen2gO Smart Tool, and following its advice, these restrictions have been relaxed, offering increased flexibility for application.
Paul Goddard, BASF Stewardship and Value Chain Manager, comments: “ “We have developed this Smart Tool with both water requirements and growers in mind. We are trying to help people do the right thing with regard to stewardship of water. Detections of metazachlor and quinmerac, in water at non-compliant levels pose a threat to their registration, so it is important that we take steps now to minimise this.
“wHen2go will not take the decision for you – that must be done by the sprayer operator – but it does enable a more informed decision to be made”.
wHen2Go has been developed independently with Agrimetrics, part of the Government’s tech strategy for agriculture.
For more information about wHen2go.