Is herbicide resistance starting to direct your clients’ rotations and management strategies? What advice will you be giving on glyphosate-resistant ryegrass, brome grass, windmill grass and fleabane? What about control of broadleaf weeds resistant to multiple modes of action? These will be among the questions posed to Victorian grains industry advisers at a Herbicide Resistance Technical Update on Friday, July 25, at Bendigo.

Sponsored by the Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC) and the Australian Glyphosate Sustainability Working Group, the Technical Update is designed to place advisers on the “front foot” in terms of herbicide resistance knowledge and understanding.

A range of experts from across Australia will be presenting and discussing strategies in detail. They include Chris Preston, University of Adelaide, looking at multiple resistance in broadleaf weeds; Andrew Storrie, Australian Glyphosate Sustainability Working Group, on how Western Australian farmers are dealing with multiple resistant wild radish; and Pingrup (WA) farmer Doug Smith who will give his thoughts on narrow windrow burning of high-yielding crops.Five tonne per ha barley crop successfully windrow burnt, March 2014

St Arnaud farmer Roy Postlethwaite and Jaron Bennett of AgriVision Consulting, Swan Hill, will discuss living with glyphosate resistance for 15 years; Peter McInerney, of 3D-Ag, Wagga Wagga (NSW), will delve into the role of manuring in farming systems in the southern grain region; Sam Kleemann, University of Adelaide (SA), will advise on understanding and managing glyphosate resistant brome grass; and Sally Peltzer, Department of Agriculture and Food WA, will explore decision support systems such as Weed Seed Wizard and RIM.

The Technical Update will be from 8:30am to 4 pm at the Bendigo Racecourse. For further information or to register, contact Andrew Storrie on 0428 423 577 or email andrew@agronomo.com.au.

For further information

Andrew Storrie, AGSWG
Phone 0428 423 577

Contact

Sharon Watt, Porter Novelli
Phone 0409 675100

 

The Australian Glyphosate Sustainability Group has now added a searchable database to there highly informative site.

You can can now search for glyphosate resistance by:

• species
• State
• Region

This will give growers, advisers and policy makers the ability to get a better idea of where glyphosate resistance is occuring and how many populations have been found.

Currently it is best viewed in Internet Explorer and Chrome.

Brome grass is one of the two “weeds-to-watch” for southern farmers.  The other is wild radish in its many combinations of herbicide resistance.

Brome grass swamping a fire break - a great source of weedsI talk about brome grass and not rigid or great brome, as I do not know anyone who can tell them apart in the paddock. In a lab under a binocular microscope, it is possible. For management purposes they should be considered the same species.

Brome grass is on the increase with the increase in minimum tillage because of limited availability of effective in-crop herbicides, delayed germinations and an ever expanding spread of herbicide resistant populations, particularly to Groups A and B. There are now 3 populations of brome identified resistant to glyphosate – two in South Australia and one from the Victorian Mallee.

The other problem is its ability to shatter. I passed a barley paddock near Kojonup, Western Australia, in late November which had a massive infestation of brome grass visible. When I passed the same crop two weeks later, most of the brome seed had dropped to the ground (see below). For harvest weed seed management to work here, the barley should have been harvested as soon as it was ripe.

Now you see it, now you don't - heavily infested barley crop where brome has shed after two weeks.Follow the link below to read a comprehensive interview with Chris Preston, University of Adelaide, regarding management of brome grass.