Australia
July 25, 2016
Many young people don’t like the taste of beer, but they know if they work hard, endure the awful bitter taste and hideous hangovers for a few years, they will eventually like the stuff. It takes effort, but if they stick at it long enough they can get there.
And, believe it or not, you have to work pretty hard to evolve resistance in wild oats. But if you stick at the same practice long enough (it takes effort), you can get there!
We have previously reported AHRI research showing that wild oats evolve resistance slowly because they are both hexaploid and self-pollinating.
Now we have more evidence of this from AHRI researcher, Mechelle Owen, through her GRDC funded work in the Western Australian resistance surveys.
Every five years, Mechelle travels through the WA cropping region collecting samples of a range of weed species at random locations. The remarkable story from this research is that wild oat resistance to Group A herbicides wasn’t any worse in the 2010 survey that it was in the 2005 survey.
In 2005, 71% of populations tested as resistant to Hoegrass. This was just 48% in the 2010 survey. In addition, Mechelle found no resistance to glyphosate, and just two Group B (ALS) resistant populations.
Given that we have hundreds of glyphosate and Group B resistant ryegrass populations, this is evidence that wild oats evolve resistance to herbicides slowly compared to ryegrass.
So what do we do with this information?
We formulate a well thought out herbicide mix and rotate plan for wild oats, and add some non-herbicide control.
Wide-spread resistance to ‘fop’ herbicides is very common in Australia because these herbicides were repeatedly used, year after year, with no other form of weed control.
If we work hard we’ll break another wild oat herbicide, but it doesn’t have to be this way.
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