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Episode transcription:
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Drew Lyon: Hello, welcome to the WSU Wheat Beat podcast. I’m your host, Drew Lyon, and I want to thank you for joining me as we explore the world of small grains production and research at Washington State University. In each episode, I speak with researchers from WSU and the USDA-ARS to provide you with insights into the latest research on wheat and barley production.
If you enjoy the WSU Wheat Beat podcast, do us a favor and subscribe on iTunes or your favorite podcast app and leave us a review so others can find the show too.
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My guests today are Dr. Nick Bergmann and Dr. Joaquin Casanova. Nick is a postdoctoral researcher at Washington State University. Nick earned a Ph.D. in earth sciences from Montana State University and an M.A. in geography from Portland State University. As a human geographer with specializations in political ecology and historical geography, Nick’s scholarship focuses largely on analysis of resource use in the US west. Currently, Nick is working with Dr. Ian Burke on projects focused on finding solutions to the growing problem of weed resistance.
Hello, Nick.
Dr. Nick Bergmann: Hey, Drew. Thanks for having me on.
Drew Lyon: Joaquin received his M.S. in agricultural engineering and Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Florida. As part of the USDA’s Northwest Sustainable Agroecosystems Research Unit, he studies remote and proximal sensing approaches for precision agriculture. He focuses on the problems of soil acidity, weeds, and nitrogen.
Hello, Joaquin.
Dr. Joaquin Casanova: Hey, Drew.
Drew Lyon: So, let’s get this started with a big question. What is harvest weed seed control? Who wants to answer that for me?
Dr. Joaquin Casanova: I’ll start off. Harvest weed seed control, it started in Australia, and it’s a form of weed control that focuses on preventing weeds from dropping their seeds at harvest time. And there’s a number of techniques, including chaff cart, direct baling, narrow windrow burning, and the harvest seed destructor.
And, some of these, you know, they’re not really options here, like, narrow windrow burning. It’s got a pretty high uptake in Australia, but is a big fire risk here. There’s a lot of air quality issues.
And so, the technique that is increasing in popularity in this region is the seed destructor and that tries to actually shatter the seeds as they’re going through the combine so that when they go back out the chute and land on a field with the residue, they’re not able to germinate.
Drew Lyon: Okay. So that’s kind of what you’ve been focusing on is the impact mill systems?
Dr. Joaquin Casanova: Yeah.
Drew Lyon: Okay. And I know those are rather expensive systems so it’s hard for university weed scientists like myself to purchase them so growers become really important in this research. So, how are you working with growers to evaluate the efficacy of these impact mills?
Dr. Nick Bergmann: Sure, I can start on this question. And, Drew, you’re part of this research project too, along with some other researchers and growers. But, really this project we have going where we just finished the first pilot season in the growing season in 2024 came out of some earlier community group work focused on trying to find solutions to herbicide resistance management. We’re out of that.
We had we had a group based out of Moscow-Pullman and the one on the Camas Prairie, and both of those groups had interest specifically in impact mills. I believe there’s been early adoption of more than 30 units across the inland Pacific Northwest. But there’s a lot of questions on how they work in our system and growers were pretty persistent in following up with me after that to see if we could get some on-farm research related to what was going on in their fields.
Dr. Joaquin Casanova: Yeah. And it’s an important thing that we’re testing out. And like you said, Drew, it’s very expensive so it’s hard for us to do it as researchers. And, you know, basically the idea is we’d like to know, is it worth the effort? And, you know, does it actually effectively control the weeds? Is it worth it given the potential increase in equipment costs, increase in fuel?
Drew Lyon: Okay. So, how are you determining that? What kind of work are you doing to try to figure that out for them?
Dr. Joaquin Casanova: Well, there’s a couple things that we can look at in tracking how effective they are. There’s basically two different areas we’re looking at. One is the seed bank. So, that’s the weed seeds that are staying in the soil that haven’t germinated yet, and they can persist for many years depending on the type of weed species. And then there’s the plants that actually germinate. So, we’re tracking both.
And to get the above ground portion, we’re basically walking around in the field on a grid and taking images of the growing crop and weeds, and then I go back to the lab and count up all the weeds in the images. And so, I get estimates of how many weeds there are per area of different species.
And then, the below ground portion at the end of the season, post-harvest, we take soil cores at the same grid and we count up the number of weed seeds in the soil cores and so we get an estimate of the seed bank. And so, you know, tracking this over several seasons, we can track the evolution of these.
Now, the problem is that both of these are pretty labor-intensive samplings. And we’re trying to cover some sort of field-scale system so in order to cover the full area, we have to use some remote sensing and proximal sensing. So, I’m taking that hand data that we’re collecting and mapping that further using drone imagery and satellite imagery.
Last season, I evaluated some different techniques to figure out what we would be using going forward. And so far, I’ve got to narrowed down to like one kind of drone and camera and one specific satellite I’m using to get imagery. So, we have a good solution going forward for mapping the weeds.
Drew Lyon: Okay. So, how, I guess–you have this up-close take, you know, with the hand labor stuff. Are you just looking at whether the seed bank increases or decreases or the size of the patch increases or decreases or what’s the methodology or how are you determining whether this tool is actually doing something?
Dr. Joaquin Casanova: Yeah. That’s a good question. It’s mostly looking at the patch size. So, you know, we have to come up with a map of what the weed density is over the field. But looking at that, you can kind of say, “Okay, on this slope there’s a big patch.” And, you know, given what you’ve mapped out, you can sort of assign that patch an area [and] track that over seasons and see how it spreads: if it increases or decreases, are the weeds adapting. You know, weed populations change. We’re looking at multiple species. So, you know, if one weed is being targeted by the seed destructor and others are able to compete, we can track that also.
Drew Lyon: Okay. So, you did this in 2024. Is that kind of setting a baseline and then you’ll follow that baseline? Or is 2024 more at getting at the methodology that you’ll use going forward?
Dr. Joaquin Casanova: Yeah. It was 2024, wow, okay. I’m getting mixed up on my years. But, yeah, [in] 2024 we evaluated three sites. Yeah, three sites. And then we’re adding an additional one in 2025. And yeah, that was I would say it was mostly just to work out the techniques we’d be using going forward. But [it] can still give us an idea about, you know, how many weeds should we expect to see, is our sampling adequate, or do we need to sample more to get a better picture? So, I think we have a plan going forward.
Drew Lyon: Okay. So, you feel like you’ve figured that out and you know how things are going to go from 2025 on.
Dr. Joaquin Casanova: Right. Yeah.
Drew Lyon: Good.
Dr. Nick Bergmann: Yeah. I would just chime in and add that I think as we go into 2025 here, one of the big questions with growers is where are we going to have controls on each of their operations or where does it make sense kind of collectively for the larger experiment to do that strategically. And you know, really just a, I guess, follow up on what Joaquin said–really, we’re trying to help understand or get evidence around the ability of the impact or hammer mill to limit the spread of weeds at harvest, which has been both, I think, in the literature and in producers’ minds something that should be occurring there. So, we’re trying to see if we have evidence that that’s the case in our systems.
And then also, there’s definitely a lot of producer interest in trying to track the seed bank here. And so, that belowground population makes sense with a lot of what Joaquin’s doing on the remote imaging side.
Drew Lyon: Okay.
And I know, Nick, you’ve been involved in a lot of the human aspects of this kind of work. What are you learning in this process of working with growers? Because as I said earlier, growers are really critical to this kind of research because we as university and ARS scientists really lack the ability to get our hands on this kind of machinery and do it on any scale.
Dr. Nick Bergmann: Yeah, yeah. I would say there’s two social dimensions to this research and we’ve really only tapped into one so far. And that first one is just the setup of the project where it was really producer-driven questions. We got the research scientists and the producers into a room and we sat down and hashed out what these research interests and questions should be in what would be call a co-produced way or a co-production of knowledge in my field is how it would be termed.
And then the second part of that–which I’m hoping to do, in subsequent years, we’ll see how things go–is to actually get a sense for why and how this technology is being adopted in the PNW, and there’s a whole set of sub questions or sub research questions around that of which there’s, you know, varying social lenses that can be used to analyze that data.
Drew Lyon: Okay. So, what other kind of research are you guys working on that maybe uses similar methods?
Dr. Joaquin Casanova: Yeah. So, I think, in this past season, the techniques that we developed there for mapping the weeds, I’m trying to apply in a couple of other projects. One is another on-farm project where the farmer is applying lime on some parts of his field, and we were both curious about, you know, Italian rye has some tolerance to aluminum and thus, you know, low pH tends to favor Italian rye. So, theoretically, applying lime should raise the pH [and] reduce the available aluminum [which] should make it less favorable for Italian rye. So, we’re going to use the same techniques to see if lime has any impact on the Italian rye population.
And then just another farmer approached me from St. John, and they were just interested in tracking some–they do like a grass seed farm. They were interested in tracking the presence of quackgrass, which is a real problem weed for them. And so, we’re going to do some similar mapping for quackgrass on those. And that’s kind of a challenging problem because you’re talking about a grassy weed, grassy crop and it’s very difficult to determine what’s what. So, we’ve got a project there.
Drew Lyon: Okay. That’s also true in this project, right? Because the weeds–you’re tracking Italian ryegrass, wild oats, was it poverty brome? Those are all, you know, grasses just like wheat is so similar challenges that you’re facing there.
Dr. Joaquin Casanova: Yeah. I mean, the major lesson we learned last season, just in what is the hardest to map, is it’s easiest when you have a broadleaf crop and grassy weed or you have a grassy crop and a broadleaf weed. But when they’re both the same, it’s harder to map, [it’s] harder to map that remotely.
Drew Lyon: Okay. I can see that. I’ll be curious to see on the liming thing, because I have a lot of growers ask me, you know, how does pH affect what weeds are growing where and how competitive it is. And so, that will be very enlightening to see the results from that over time.
Dr. Joaquin Casanova: Yeah.
Drew Lyon: All right. So, how can growers become involved in this kind of research if they’re interested in some of these questions you’re already asking or they have another question that’s on their mind.
Dr. Nick Bergmann: Yeah, I can probably take this one. So, I guess I’d answer that in two ways. One, very easily you could reach out to any of us through various mechanisms online or whatnot. And then secondly, we’re hoping to kind of build out a network or a community of research around these impact mills beyond the four producers we’re currently working with, with a collection of field days, workshops, additional kind of education outreach materials over time. So, if you do have one of these units, we’d love to hear from you and/or we may reach out if we get your contact info it at some point.
Drew Lyon: Okay. We’ll make sure we put your contact info in the show notes so if somebody wants to reach out to you. I imagine, what you’re doing with these 3 or 4 growers can’t really be repeated if you have 40 growers, right?
Dr. Joaquin Casanova: Well, that’s the idea with the remote aspect is that we could expand the research sample using remote methods because, you know, the labor-intensive sampling is just not possible on, you know, 40+ farms or whatever it is.
Drew Lyon: Okay. But what you learn on those four can be then extrapolated out to work with others using satellites and/or drones, I suppose, to do some mapping. All right.
So, where can people go to find out how this project’s moving along? Is there a website or a webpage or do they have to stay tuned to read a Timely Topic or something about it? What’s the avenue for learning how this is going?
Dr. Nick Bergmann: That’s a great question, Drew. I think because we’re just transitioning from pilot study to really ramping this project up, a little of that is still being worked out. I think we will have a presence on the Pacific Northwest Herbicide Resistance Initiative website but that would still be in development. You know, we’d love to be able to contribute to Weeders of the West blog and then I imagine that maybe on the Small Grain site at some point. Once we get more of a presence there, we can be there.
Drew Lyon: Yeah, I’m going to invite you to do that. Right. If we get some results, maybe do a Timely Topic and let growers know how this is progressing because, personally–and I’m biased–I find this to be very interesting work. And I think it’s the type of work that we’re probably going to see ourselves doing more and more in the future as these technologies become expensive to implement at the small scale that university researchers, anyhow, are used to working at.
Thanks for this work and for being on my show today to share your insights on this project.
Dr. Joaquin Casanova: Oh. You’re welcome.
Dr. Nick Bergmann: Thanks a lot, Drew. [I] appreciate the opportunity.
Drew Lyon:
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Thanks for joining us and listening to the WSU Wheat Beat podcast. If you like what you hear don’t forget to subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast app. If you have questions or topics you’d like to hear on future episodes, please email me at drew.lyon — that’s lyon@wsu.edu — (drew.lyon@wsu.edu). You can find us online at smallgrains.wsu.edu and on Facebook and Twitter [X] @WSUSmallGrains. The WSU Wheat Beat podcast is a production of CAHNRS Communications and the College of Agricultural, Human, and Natural Resource Sciences at Washington State University.
I’m Drew Lyon, we’ll see you next time.
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The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed by guests of this podcast are their own and does not imply Washington State University’s endorsement.