By Bill Curran and Emily Unglesbee, Emeritus Extension Weed Specialist and GROW Director of Outreach and Extension, williamscurran@gmail.com and emilysu@vt.edu 

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The GROW (Getting Rid of Weeds) network is a multi-state, scientist-led team that coordinates research and education on best management practices for herbicide use and non-chemical weed control tactics to help farmers and land managers fight herbicide resistance. Herbicide-resistant weeds have increased globally, with major economic consequences for farmers and land managers. The GROW team consists of agronomists, weed scientists, communicators, and economists from around the U.S. With support from USDA and commodity boards, GROW  helps producers combat herbicide resistance by adopting integrated weed management (IWM). GROW research and education has focused on IWM strategies such as cover crops, harvest weed seed control and precision weed management technology. The GROW website provides resources to advance  IWM practices through weekly news posts, Farmer Forums, educational web pages, weed ID factsheets, videos, and farmer case studies. Here are a few of our key educational efforts:

A fallow field with a trail of herbicide resistant kochia growing in it. The trail depicts where a resistant plant tumbled across the field depositing its seeds.

Trail of herbicide resistant kochia in a fallow field. Photo: Phil Stahlman, Kansas State University.

Basics of Herbicide Resistance and How to Manage Herbicide Resistance with IWM describes how resistance happens and how to identify it, costs to manage resistance, herbicide classification based on mode of action (MOA), types of resistance and mechanisms, IWM strategies, selecting sound herbicide options, tank-mixing and herbicide rotation, effective non-chemical strategies, and innovative technologies on the horizon.

GROW collaborates with Take Action Herbicide-Resistance Management, a farmer-focused education platform funded by the Soy Checkoff and designed to help farmers manage herbicide resistance and adopt practices that help preserve current and future herbicide technologies. The Herbicide Classification Chart is a flagship product produced by Take Action and GROW that breaks down herbicide products by MOA, to help farmers mix and rotate herbicides to prevent resistance development.

Precision Weed Management can include many different technologies. Our goal is to connect farmers with site-specific knowledge to enable science-based, real-time decision making. GROW researchers are working in collaboration with Precision Sustainable Agriculture, a public ag tech development network to build decision support tools that help farmers better manage cover crops.  We are also building an Agricultural Image Repository of plants, which feeds PlantMap3D, an open-access mapping tool designed to assist with  management decisions.

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Cover Crops as a Weed Management Tool describes how to use cover crops to help manage problem weeds. We answer many questions, including how much cover crop biomass you need, how to establish and terminate a competitive cover crop,  how to integrate cover crops into an IWM program, and how to use cover crops in moisture limited regions like Montana.

By using GROW to help you adopt IWM, you can effectively manage and stop the spread of herbicide-resistant weeds.

Further Information

For more information about this month's weed post, contact Extension Invasive Plant Specialist Jane Mangold. Past posts are available in the Monthly Weed Post Directory.

This weed post is also available as a printable PDF (187 KB).