b'job of building stacks and moving largerthe stacked traits on the herbicide front.growers the ability to manage those segments of DNA, Greene says. A majority of the acreage has movedresistant weeds in a constructive way that to stacks. In Arkansas, were a majoritydrives productivity on that acre.Demand Continues for Multi-Stackof Xtend and XtendFlexwith aroundTheres never been a more exciting Traits 70-75% of the acreage being Xtend ortime, Greene says. Were getting better As the future continues to more traitsXtendFlex, he says, adding that mostat identifying novel modes of action. with more stacks, the demand is alsogrowers try to stay within the same tech- Were getting better at building molecular increasing for multi-stack soybean traits. nology for their crops.stakes, and were going to get better at In Arkansas, Jeremy Ross, profes- These multi-stack traits are the waydriving genetic variability of our native sor and soybean Extension agronomistwere going to go from here on out,genomes.for the University of Arkansas SystemRoss says. Right now were at three-wayAs an example, Greene points to Division of Agricultures Cooperativestacksin the future, there are talks thatthe corn sector, where companies like Extension Service, notes that growerswell have four- or five-way stacks. Corteva are able to build disease super have shifted almost completely awaylocus, taking multiple native corn genes from single-stack soybeans. The biggestTraits in the Future to identify the best genetic variability reason is the struggle to battle PalmerAs you continue to see resistance infor targeted disease species. Some of amaranth in the mid-South.the marketplace, Greene believes thethose corn genes arent even from North Most of the populations of Palmer wedemand for multi-stack traits will con- American varietiesand companies are have in the state are resistant to glypho- tinue to grow as farmers expect choicesworking on moving more and more dis-sate, Ross says. Even back for the lastthat meet their needs.ease resistant traits into North American five or six years, weve been grouping ourTheres that demand for broader solu- germplasm to add to a single disease single-stack Roundup varieties with ourtions to enable growers to manage thesuper locus.conventionals because were really havingchallenges they see on the farm, he says.Were starting that journey in soybean to treat our single-stack varieties withThink about the glyphosate resistantas well, Greene says. Im super excited conventional herbicides. weeds across the Midwestthat pres- about our ability to mine genetic diver-There are still a handful in the statesure on those resistant weeds continuessity in a way weve never been able to trying to do this, but its not feasible toto evolve and continues to grow. Havingdo. That will be the next evolution from a fight that battle without having some ofmultiple modes of action gives thosetechnology standpoint.SW28/ SEEDWORLD.COMDECEMBER 2022'