December 20, 2019
We’ve had a fantastic year at AHRI from a research and communications perspective, so we thought it would be fitting to run through some of our top-performing AHRI insights and AHRI Snapshots podcasts for 2019.
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December 12, 2019
Merv Hughes was not a fit-looking cricketer. Merv was a notorious consumer of food and alcohol, and it showed! Despite this, he was a successful professional sportsman. Mitchell Johnson, on the other hand, was the epitome of a fit, healthy fast bowler. But who had the better bowling average? You guessed it, big swervin’ Mervin!! 28.38 compared to Johnson’s 28.4. Ok, we’re splitting hairs here, but you get the picture, how fit you look is only part of the story.
If you grew 2,4-D resistant radish in pots on its own, and compared that to the good old susceptible radish of yesteryear, you would find that the resistant ones are a bit smaller overall, slightly shorter, have smaller leaves and they are slightly more dormant so they germinate a bit later.
You would think that all of this would add up to a less fit wild radish plant that is less competitive with our crops.
That’s exactly what AHRI researcher, Dr Danica Goggin, thought when she observed these differences in her research to work out how 2,4-D resistance works. So she studied it. Click through to learn what she found!
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December 5, 2019
Pre-emergent herbicides are a valuable tool to underpin crop competition and suppress weed seed production in-crop, but when growers also want to harness the power of retained stubble they often run into a sticking point where pre-emergent herbicide efficacy is compromised. Most growers and advisors are aware that products such as trifluralin are quite tightly bound if they contact stubble during application, however, AHRI research associate Dr Yaseen Khalil has been working to shed light on the behaviour of the newer pre-emergent herbicides and how to use them in no-till, stubble retention farming systems. Click through to learn more.
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November 11, 2019
Wine casks, plastic banknotes, WiFi, the refrigerator, lawnmower and the humble ute (pickup truck) are all Australian, world-first inventions. Which of these makes the biggest difference in your life? As long as it’s not the wine cask you’re doing just fine!
We now have a world first in herbicide resistance. research by visiting Chinese researcher to AHRI, Dr Pan Lang under the watchful eye of Qin Yu, concluded that they were looking at the world’s first case of metabolism-based resistance to glyphosate. The culprit? Click through to find out!
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November 4, 2019
Fitness is a big thing amongst the AHRI Comms team. We have bike riders, runners, a kitesurfer, a netballer, a touch footy player – and there’s only seven of us.
Fitness is also a big thing in the world of herbicide resistance.
Perhaps that’s why we’ve talked so much about herbicide resistance and fitness in past AHRI Insights. In particular, how certain types of glyphosate resistance result in a fitness penalty, where resistant plants are weaker and more susceptible to competition from other plants.
Unfortunately, not all types of glyphosate resistance impose a fitness penalty. Click through to learn more.
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October 15, 2019
What sort of person goes to a cocktail party and sticks strictly to beer?
A smart one! We all know that mixing drinks can hurt the next day.
We can’t say the same for herbicide mixing though. The smart farmers and agronomists are mixing two or more herbicides targeting the same resistant weed to delay resistance and maximise weed control, and the science is supporting this approach.
AHRI researcher Roberto Busi is a long-term advocate of herbicide mixing and in his recent paper which describes some computer modelling that he undertook with the help of Michael Renton.
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October 4, 2019
This AHRI Insight is a follow-up on an earlier article ‘Crops are doin’ it for themselves’ to where we investigated the complex interactions of competitive crops and their weed suppression powers.
While that paper focused on cereals, in this one we will consider the mechanisms at play in canola, a crop from the mustard family, long known for its allelopathic ability and yet the exact mechanisms are still shrouded in mystery.
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September 25, 2019
‘Trending now’ seems to be everywhere – iTunes, Twitter, the news, so why not herbicide resistance? What have been the #Top5 trends in resistance management over the past decade?
As a young agronomist 20-something years ago (clearly before trending was a thing), I remember learning about the threat of herbicide resistance as if it was a kind of apocalypse. Some growers were genuinely concerned that they wouldn’t be able to continue farming.
We’ve come a long way in a relatively short time. In this insight, we look closely at what’s trending in the herbicide resistance management space.
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September 19, 2019
The ad in the paper that reads “Horse, free to a good home” seems to be a good deal at first, but what is the true cost of owning a horse? Roughly similar to running a Lamborghini as I understand!
The ‘do it yourself’ narrow windrow burning chute seems cheap at the time, but what is the true cost?
It depends…
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September 10, 2019
Huan Lu’s been investigating a population of wild radish that has the infamous Ser-264-gly mutation. This is the target-site mutation that is behind TT canola and makes wild radish highly resistant to PSII-inhibiting herbicides like atrazine and, to a lesser extent, metribuzin.
But, he wondered if there was more to this resistance than first meets the eye. Does focusing on the strong 264 mutation mean that we could fail to identify other important resistance mechanisms?
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