Sulfentrazone 4sc Mixing Instructions

Sulfentrazone 4sc Mixing Instructions

Sulfentrazone 4SC is a suspension concentrate herbicide. The active ingredient sits as fine solid particles suspended in liquid, which means it does not freely mix like a true solution. If you pour it straight into a sprayer without proper preparation, you will end up with clogged nozzles, uneven application, and patches where weeds survive because the chemical never reached them. I learned this the hard way on a 320-acre soybean job back in 2019. A bulk tanker valve was barely open, the agitation was off, and I loaded a partial tank. When I got out to the field, the first three passes were thin as hell. The product had settled and separated in the lower portion of the tank. I ended up having to stop, shut down the whole rig, refill the mixing tank, and restart. Cost me about forty minutes and a chunk of fuel. Here is how you do it correctly. Fill your mixing tank or sprayer to about twenty to thirty percent of its total capacity with clean water. Start agitation before you add anything. Once agitation is running, pour the sulfentrazone 4SC directly into the flowing water stream. Do not dump it in a still pool. Use a measuring container calibrated for liquid pesticides. The standard label rate for pre-emergent soybean application is between 12 and 16 fluid ounces per acre, but your specific situation and local regulations may adjust that. Always check the label on your container first. After the product is in the tank, continue agitation and fill the remainder of the tank to the desired volume. Keep the agitator running throughout the entire spraying operation. Suspension concentrates settle quickly when agitation stops. I keep a simple rule now: if the agitation dies for more than thirty seconds, I shut the sprayer down and let it run back up before I move. Skipping that step is how you get streaks across a field.

When you are done spraying, the cleanout procedure matters just as much as the mixing. Fill the tank one-third with water, add a tank cleanser or a surfactant-based cleaner, run agitation for at least fifteen minutes, and then drain. Rinse twice more with clean water. Sulfentrazone tank walls pretty aggressively, and dried residue will flake off into your next tank mix and clog metering systems. A few things people routinely mess up. First, sulfentrazone 4SC is sensitive to hard water. If your water source has high mineral content, especially calcium and magnesium above two hundred parts per million, you can get thickening or gel formation inside the tank. I tested my well water once and it came back at four hundred eighty ppm hardness. I switched to using city water for mixing and never had the issue again. Second, do not premix sulfentrazone 4SC with certain micronutrient solutions or fertilizer streams that have extreme pH levels. I once accidentally pulled a line that had leftover ammonium nitrate in it at pH below four. The sulfentrazone started breaking down visually within ten minutes. The tank lining changed texture slightly and the spray pattern looked milky instead of uniform. That tank went to waste. Third, temperature matters less than people think but it is not irrelevant. Below fifty degrees Fahrenheit the suspension thickens noticeably. The pump has to work harder and the flow meters read slightly low. I adjust my ground speed down a mile or two per hour when it is cold to compensate. If you are tank mixing with other herbicides, add the sulfentrazone 4SC first or early in the sequence. Most other products in soybean pre-emerge programs are liquid formulations that disperse easier once the base suspension is already moving. There is a common belief that you should add all the products at once and let the agitation handle it. That works fine in a large commercial sprayer with a high-flow mechanical agitator. It does not work well in a smaller unit with a weak pump circulation. I run a sixty gallon jump sprayer for border rows and field edges, and I have seen clumping happen when everything goes in at the same time. Stagger the additions by a minute or two.

The product does not absorb through foliage the way some post-emergence herbicides do. It needs to form a chemical barrier at the soil surface. That means you want good coverage of the soil, not necessarily heavy droplet size. Fine to medium droplets actually deposit better on soil surfaces than coarse ones. I usually set my nozzles to around fifty psi with flood or air induction tips depending on the terrain. Wind speed should be under ten miles per hour at application time. Any faster and you lose product to drift, and sulfentrazone volatilization potential increases when it dries on the surface without incorporating rainfall or irrigation within a week. Storage is straightforward but worth noting. Keep the container sealed and stored between fifty and eighty-five degrees Fahrenheit. Do not let it freeze. Frozen and thawed product separates and the suspension integrity degrades. If a container has been exposed to freezing temperatures, inspect it carefully before use. Look for separation that does not reincorporate after vigorous shaking. I have opened containers that looked fine on top and had a concrete-like layer at the bottom that agitation never fully broke up. I discarded those. Better to lose one quart than to ruin a whole tank mix. Personal protective equipment is standard chemical handling gear. Nitrile gloves, long sleeves, long pants, closed-toe shoes, and goggles. The product is not acutely dangerous at normal handling concentrations, but it is an irritant and there is no reason to expose your skin to unnecessary contact. I used to skip the gloves in summer because of heat. I stopped doing that after I noticed mild dermatitis forming on my wrists from repeated exposure. It took three weeks to clear up. Not worth it.

Application timing varies by crop and target weeds. For soybeans, apply at planting or shortly after but before emergence. For corn, the same window generally applies. The product controls broadleaf weeds primarily and has decent activity on Palmer amaranth, waterhemp, and pigweed species at the higher end of the rate range. It is not effective on grasses unless tank-mixed with a grass herbicide. If you are dealing with a grass problem, plan around that limitation before you mix. The biggest failure point I see in the field is people treating sulfentrazone 4SC like a liquid solution. It is not. It is a suspension. Every step from measurement through application and cleanup should reflect that reality. The extra five minutes you spend on proper mixing and tank cleaning saves you hours of troubleshooting no-clog repairs and reapplication passes. I have probably saved myself over a hundred hours of wasted time over the last several seasons by just being methodical about it. If you need the full label, search for the EPA-approved sulfentrazone 4SC product label. Your state extension office or the manufacturer website will have it. The label is the legal document and it supersedes any general guidance you find online. I refer back to mine at least once per season just to confirm rate adjustments and re-entry intervals. Nothing embarrassing about double-checking.