This costs both time and money. The herbicide acts when it comes into direct contact with weeds and a single application prevents weeds from germinating again throughout the entire growing season. The Clearfield Production System includes herbicides based on imidazolinones, which have been on the market for more than 10 years. These active ingredients are used primarily on crops such as soybeans, peanuts and other legumes, since these crops are naturally tolerant to these herbicides. However, imidazolinones also act against many other weeds and crops by specifically influencing an important enzyme that is responsible for the synthesis of a complex amino acid.
Weeds can acquire resistance to herbicides as a result of natural mutations.
This property of plants is used by BASF researchers to produce seeds that are tolerant to imidazolinones. Scientists trigger gene mutations in cultivated plants and cross these plants with one another several times. By using these traditional breeding methods, researchers obtain daughter generations with a variety of characteristics. In some plants, the mutations result in an alteration of the very enzyme against which the imidazolinones act and the plant is therefore resistant to the herbicide. The combination of a line of seeds and tailor-made herbicides have been marketed worldwide under the name Clearfield Production System since 1999.