The Environmental Protection Agency announcement April 1 a 30-day public-comment period for in-crop use of dicamba herbicide with Bollgard II XtendFlex cotton and Roundup Ready 2 Xtend soybeans.

“Stakeholder comments will make a difference,” said Kim Magin, Monsanto’s director of industry affairs. “Supportive letters are important for regulators to understand the various perspectives from farmers and other agricultural stakeholders.”

Target weeds include glyphosate-resistant broadleaf weeds such as Palmer amaranth, waterhemp and marestail, along with other tough-to-control broadleaf weeds such as lambsquarters and velvetleaf.

XtendFlex cotton includes three herbicide tolerant traits—Roundup, glufosonate and dicamba.

Roundup Ready 2 soybeans will offer Roundup and dicamba tolerance.

Monsanto’s Asgrow, Channel and regional brands, along with Corn States licensees, expect to introduce more than 70 soybean products across eight maturity groups with agronomic traits including resistance to nematodes and phytophthora root rot. Roundup Ready 2 Xtend soybeans are broadly licensed to more than 100 seed brands.

Final approval of the new technology will allow farmers to use dicamba in-crop with soybeans tolerant to dicamba and glyphosate and with cotton tolerant to dicamba, glyphosate and glufosinate.

The seed technology has been approved for unrestricted commercial planting since December, 2014, following a USDA assessment of Monsanto’s Roundup Ready 2 Xtend soybeans and Bollgard II XtendFlex cotton.

Comments on the EPA’s proposed regulatory decision on in-crop use of dicamba must be submitted no later than April 30. Comments may be submitted to the EPA docket EPA-HQ-OPP-2016-0187 at www.regulations.gov.

After the comment period closes, EPA will review all of the comments and reach a final decision, which the agency expects to issue in late summer or early fall 2016.