Pattern Emerging in Fight Against Resistant Weeds

Wes Everman weed scientist for NC State Extension spoke at the Blackland Farm Managers Field Day in Hyde County about resistant weeds last week, and had some alarming information for producers fighting resistant Palmer pigweed and mare’s tail:

“When you look at what we have now, we have what can be called a three legged stool for resistance management in soybeans. We have our traditional grass products and PPO inhibitors, and then we have the liberty link beans in several systems. Our use patterns will dictate how successful we are in keeping those products around. If we keep using them without regard to management, we could lose those quickly. I would say 3-5 years for the PPO inhibitor.

And there isn’t anything coming down the pipeline behind them. The 2/4 D beans and the cama beans are about three years out. They are old technologies that we have had around. The scary part is you don’t get great control of big pigweeds. We will need to be very careful with how we manage them.
 

The big question is what can we do to remove pigweeds from the fields. It looks like we will be stuck with our pre-products, using overlaps and residuals and using what we have and protect the technologies and the herbicide options. If we lose the PPOs or Liberty, we will just rely on the oxens and after that there are HPPD Beans coming in the pipeline, but those are a few years out. So we will be back to hand pulling. 

But it’s necessary to remember that if you physically remove the weed from the ground you need to take it out of the field with you. If you drop it in the field and there is a seed head on it, odds are that in a few days it will have a viable seed right back in the soil. Even if there is no seed head, but you get a good rain, it will re-root. “ 
 

Wes Everman, Weed Scientist with NC State Extension.