Check out these Weed Resources for Wintertime

""

As the snow begins to fall, memories of the 2021 crop season begin to fade and thoughts about what lies ahead in 2022 start to take center stage. I would like to use this Timely Topic to point you to some of the weed management resources I think you might find useful when planning for 2022.

Herbicide resistance is widespread throughout Eastern Washington wheat production systems. The PNW Extension publication “Best Management Practices for Managing Herbicide Resistance” is a graphics-heavy publication that presents growers and farm managers with best management practices (BMPs) that can be incorporated into farming systems to manage herbicide resistance. The Herbicide Resistance Resources page has links to many useful resources to help understand and manage herbicide resistance.

It is often difficult for growers to know the active ingredients, and their associated mechanism of action, that are in various herbicide products. Two decision support tools on the Wheat & Small Grains website can help growers select herbicides with different mechanisms of action to avoid overuse of a single mechanism of action. These two tools are:

  1. Herbicide Mechanism of Action (MOA)–Wheat
  2. Herbicide Mechanism of Action (MOA)–Pulse Crops

Other decision support tools that may be of interest include:

  1. Herbicide Comparison Tool, which allows users to identify herbicide products used by dryland crop producers in Eastern Washington that contain the same active ingredient(s).
  2. Winter Wheat Herbicide Efficacy Tables, which provides growers with the relative effectiveness of various herbicides on a range of weeds commonly found in wheat.
  3. AMS Sprayer Mix Calculator, which determines the amount of ammonium sulfate needed to offset the cations in a water sample that can antagonize glyphosate activity.

Weed scientists from throughout the PNW contribute posts to the Weeders of the West Blog. These posts cover weed management issues across a wide range of crops grown in the region. You can subscribe to the listserv to receive notices when a new article is posted. Readers are encouraged to comment on posts to broaden the discussion.

Additional resources on the Weed Resources page include:

  1. The Common Weeds List, where you can read about some of the more common weeds in wheat production systems and how to manage them
  2. A Weed ID Quiz where you can test your weed identification skills.
  3. The WSU Weed Control Reports, which are published annually and summarize the results of field studies conducted throughout Eastern Washington

If you find yourself with some time on your hands this winter, check out a few of the above resources and see if you find any of them to be helpful. Please feel free to send me your comments and suggestions for how these resources could be improved.
 
Enjoy the short respite from field work and have a safe and happy holidays!


Drew Lyon.

For questions or comments, contact Drew Lyon via email at drew.lyon@wsu.edu or phone at 509-335-2961.