Managing the Risk of Glyphosate Resistant Weeds

Glyphosate resistant (GR) weeds have been the focus of much debate since the introduction of Roundup Ready crops in the mid 1990’s. Initially the questions focused on whether GR weeds would actually develop, but this quickly changed to how to prevent their selection following their rapid appearance after the introduction of Roundup Ready crops. Evaluating the relative effectiveness of different resistance management strategies is difficult due to the both the low frequency of GR within native weed populations, and the variety of selection pressures placed on weeds during the time frame required for resistance to evolve. Modeling is one way that resistance management tactics can be evaluated, and several papers have been published recently based on these research tools. This article will briefly summarize results of a few of these papers.