Australia
October 1, 2018
 

Wine and cheese. Strawberries and cream. Crop competition and pre-emergent herbicides.

Ok so the last one doesn’t quite have the same ring about it but they really do go together nicely. Combining a competitive canola variety with pre-emergent herbicides has proven to be an effective strategy for reducing annual ryegrass seed set. Considering limited post-emergent options and increasing levels of ryegrass resistance to clethodim, the ‘crop competition + pre-emergent’ combo is a strategy which deserves serious attention.

Trials by University of Adelaide researchers Sam Kleeman, Gurjeet Gill and Chris Preston, together with the Hart Field-Site Group and Southern Farming Systems, showed that with effective pre-emergent herbicides, a competitive hybrid canola variety can reduce ryegrass seed set by 50% compared with a less competitive open-pollinated (OP) variety.

That’s impressive. But should we tar all OP varieties with the same brush? The research team repeated the trial using a more competitive OP variety and found crop competition to be similar to the hybrid variety.

Research by Dr Deirdre Lemerle has shown varieties can vary significantly in their competitive ability, but hybrids were found to be generally more competitive than OP varieties.

Regardless of hybrid or OP, it’s definitely worth assessing competitive ability when choosing varieties – together with an effective pre-emergent herbicide strategy, it just might make a great combo.

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Website: http://www.ahri.uwa.edu.au/

Published: October 1, 2018