Teagasc is asking tillage farmers to take part in a survey on weeds in their crops.
Herbicide resistance is becoming a big problem across tillage crops, particularly with grass weeds. As part of the Enable Conservation Tillage (ECT) project, Teagasc has released a weed survey.
It is hoped that information gathered from the survey will help to increase researchers’ and advisers’ understanding of grower concerns. The information gathered will also be used to help to improve knowledge transfer activities and to help to develop a weed containment programme which is practical to implement.
The survey takes about 15 minutes to complete and is divided into two sections. The first section contains 18 questions. The second section has eight questions which are focused on farm plans and the potential loss of glyphosate.
If you would like to take part in the survey you can do so by clicking here
Resistance to grass weeds is of particular concern and in order to protect chemistry that is there farmers should be implementing an integrated pest management strategy on their farm which uses chemistry as the last resort when controlling these weeds.
Herbicide resistance in wild oats
Last season, herbicide resistance testing of wild oats was carried out across the main tillage region of the country. Approximately 5% of the fields sampled, where wild oats were found pre-harvest, had some herbicide resistant plants within their wild oat populations.
These plants were resistant to pinoxaden, propaquizafop and cycloxydim (Axial, Falcon and Stratos Ultra).