Most prairie farmers know about herbicide-resistant weeds, but they are not so clear about how to avoid them.
The Weed Resistance Education and Action Program, or WREAP, commissioned polling firm Ipsos-Reid to survey 500 farmers last spring.
It found that 73 percent of those polled were aware that wild oats have developed resistance to several chemical herbicides.
Only 39 percent said they know a lot about resistant weed management practices.
However, weed specialists were comforted by survey results that showed many farmers are using tools to manage weed resistance without being aware that they are.
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“I think the message we need to get out is that it is not a fundamental change in the way they are farming,” said Jay Isberg, a WREAP member and a product manager with DuPont Canada.
“They are doing a lot of the right things anyhow.”
WREAP, a partnership between provincial and federal agriculture departments and industry, brings together weed experts from the prairie provinces. It was formed in the late 1990s to provide information on herbicide resistance and motivate farmers to take action.
The survey also found that a majority of farmers think resistant weeds will become a greater problem on their farms in the coming years and want to know more about how to prevent and control them.
Isberg said WREAP plans to provide agronomists at the retail level with strategies to manage resistant weeds.
“They are very accessible. They are on people’s farms already. They are probably in tune with how the individual farms his land and they are in a really good spot to suggest the best way to implement integrated resistance management strategy.”
Hugh Beckie, a WREAP member and weed specialist with Agriculture Canada in Saskatoon, said the group is promoting a management strategy that includes herbicide group rotation, certified seed, crop rotations that encourage strong competition against weeds, and sanitation to reduce the transport of weed seeds from field to field.
Herbicide resistance develops in weeds when a field is sprayed with the same chemical group year after year.
Natural diversity results in a few weeds surviving the spray. If nothing is done to kill them in another way, the survivors will reproduce to become the dominant weed of that species in the field.
Already, cases have been reported in recent years of wild oats and green foxtail that are resistant to several herbicide groups, making control more difficult.
While it might not be possible to eliminate resistant weeds, Beckie said integrated resistance management can significantly slow their spread.
If a patch of weeds develops that appears to be resistant, Beckie recommended sending a sample to a laboratory for confirmation. The patch should be mowed, tilled or sprayed with a non-selective herbicide before flowering and seed production.
He also said Canadian researchers are watching resistance-management strategies in Australia, where herbicide-resistance became a problem 10 years earlier than it did in Canada.
