Australian Herbicide Resistance Initiative (AHRI) insight #103 - GST – a tax on herbicide molecules
Australia
July 31, 2018
When you buy a birthday cake, the goods and services tax (GST) makes the cost of the cake bigger. If only Mr Hewson could have explained it so succinctly he may have been Prime Minister!
There's another type of GST in plants that do the same thing to herbicide molecules. It makes them bigger and then the whole thing gets smashed to pieces.
You already know that AHRI researcher Roberto Busi created Sakura (Pyroxasulfone) resistant ryegrass in the lab before the herbicide was even released to the market because we reported on it here.
Now Roberto and others have worked out how this ryegrass evolved resistance to Sakura before Sakura resistant ryegrass has become a problem in the field in Australia! It was metabolism based resistance.
The GST in plants are enzymes called glutathione-S-transferase. In other words, they join or transfer the big molecule glutathione onto other molecules. In this case, the herbicide Sakura.
This roughly doubles the size of the Sakura molecule, and then other processes take place to break the whole thing into little pieces. And it appears that this is how wheat tolerates Sakura too.
It’s rare for researchers to discover a herbicide resistance mechanism before it becomes a problem in the field and hopefully, this understanding will help us manage this problem when it becomes a reality. Click through to find out more below.
Topics
Species
