‘Weeding’ out high weed risk species from pasture breeding programs: introducing an environmental weed risk management process into the CRC for Plant-Based Management of Dryland Salinity

Historically, pasture breeders have not considered environmental weed risk in species selection and assessment. Consequently several pasture or former pasture species are now problematic environmental weeds in Australia. The CRC for Plant-Based Management of Dryland Salinity (CRC) has taken a pro-active approach to prevent further introduction or promotion of weedy pasture species by developing a weed risk management (WRM) process to ‘weed out’ high weed risk species before they are promoted or released. The development of this process has involved consultation and collaboration with both weed scientists and pasture breeders, and is now being adopted throughout the CRC. The WRM process attempts to draw on the breeder’s knowledge from pasture trials to make judgments on the potential of species to become a high impact, invasive environmental weed. This paper describes the WRM process, its limitations and the challenges faced in its development, communication and adoption by the end user. The potential for this WRM process to be used by a broader range of end users is also discussed.