In recent years, one of the most common questions we get asked by producers whose soybeans have been injured with dicamba is, "Is there anything I can do about it?" In an attempt to answer this question, we conducted a research trial over three seasons to determine if any tactics could be used as a recovery treatment for dicamba-injured soybean. In this research, we intentionally injured soybean at the V3 or R2 growth stage with 1/100th the normal use rate of dicamba (i.e., a common 'driftable dose'). Two weeks after this drift event occurred at each growth stage, we applied various 'recovery treatments' to the soybean to determine if yield losses from dicamba injury could be minimized or perhaps even eliminated. The recovery treatments we applied included a variety of common foliar fertilizer products (PercPlus, Megafol, YieldOn, etc), a fungicide (Priaxor), urea with Agrotain, a plant growth hormone (Radiate), and weekly irrigation.
Yield results from the three years of this research trial are summarized in Figure 1. For simplicity, these results were combined across the V3 and R2 drift events, since growth stage and the timing of the drift event was not a major factor that influenced how soybean responded to these recovery treatments.
Figure 1 Soybean yield in response to various recovery treatments applied 14 days after dicamba injury. Results are combined across the V3 and R2 growth stage injury events in 2017, 2018, and 2019. Bars with the same letters are not statistically different (P>0.05).