Lack of consistent regulation and marketing of adjuvants and complexity of the interaction among plant, herbicide, environment, water quality, and adjuvant have caused general confusion in adjuvant selection among growers. Choosing the best adjuvant is difficult. Growers must chose from thousands of commercial products and are confused by product descriptions with unfamiliar ingredients and functions. Confusing recommendations, aggressive marketing, and lack of unbiased research and educational information make matters even worse. Manufacturer lists of approved adjuvant products, guidelines that set minimum requirements to qualify adjuvants for use with herbicides, and packaging effective adjuvants with herbicides either in the herbicide formulation or packaged in a different container help reduce grower confusion. University adjuvant research and education have aided grower knowledge and understanding of adjuvants by field testing adjuvants and have influenced herbicide label wording and recommendations.

Adjuvant research contributes much to the knowledge and practice of weed science though the scientific process of systematically asking precise questions and subsequently making distinctions among alternative explanations. The purpose of adjuvant experimentation is to answer these questions and the purpose of associated papers and presentations is to communicate the new information. These purposes are self-evident, but are difficult to perfect. Some factors are particularly difficult for adjuvant researchers and require that researchers plan thoroughly from the formulation of the experimental question to final presentation of results. Adjuvant research requires both chemical and biological expertise that is traditionally separated in most organizations. Scientists from other disciplines or weed scientists not primarily concerned with adjuvants often direct adjuvant studies. This paper discusses mistakes that are commonly made in test design, interpretation, and presentation and suggests guidelines to improve the quality of adjuvant research.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

(In Flanders Field by Lieut. Col. John McCrae, who died in France on January 28, 1918, after four years of service on the Western Front)

The corn poppy (Papaver rhoeas L.), simple and enduring, has been a symbol of rural beauty and tradition for thousands of years. Artist John Ruskin (1819–1900) called it the most transparent and delicate of all the field blossoms (Haughton 1978). Other names for the species include field poppy, corn rose, pepper box, Flanders poppy, canker, redfield, and red poppy (de Bray 1978; le Strange 1977).