The first edition of "Integrated weed management in Australian Cropping systems" was published in 2006. This manual was a world first and it broke new ground in the fight against herbicide resistance. This manual was a huge collaboration under the umbrella of the CRC for Australian Weed Management.

The GRDC saw the value in the project and helped fund the development and printing of the manual.

Eight years later the revised manual is available online at the GRDC.

While it follows the same structure as the first edition it has some new sections and different emphasis.

There are now 23 weed profiles with the addition of fumitory (Fumaria spp.), feathertop Rhodes grass (Chloris virgata) and windmill grass (Chloris truncata).

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

 

A recent trip through the Pilbara showed widespread establishment of buffel grass (Cenchrus ciliaris). It was looking impressive on many properties following substantial rain across the region in May.  While the presence of a palatable perennial grass is good news for graziers it is a major problem for anyone managing native vegetation areas in National Parks and Nature reserves.

Buffel grass changes the ecology of the area. While we tend to think in easily visible species such as kangaroos and wallabies which no doubt also find buffel grass good tucker. On the other hand there are small marsupials, rodents, reptiles and other animals we rarely see that find their environment vastly changed, often to the negative.

Probably the best stand was in the Cape Ranges National Park near Exmouth where it was 70 to 90 per cent ground cover.

Distribution of buffel grass in Australia. Source:Australian Virtual Herbarium

Another issue that was obvious on our travels was that many properties had very little ground cover or feed, despite heavy rain 4 weeks before. It would be reasonable to assume that most of the water ran off without entering the soil due to the lack of ground cover. The image below shows how little soil cover there was despite reasonable recent rains.

Grazing exclusion zone (background) showing potential groundcover versus actual groundcover (foreground).

For more information on buffel grass go to:

http://www.dpi.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/347153/awmg_buffel-grass.pdf

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.