Tillage has long been an essential component of traditional agricultural systems. Broadly defined, tillage is the mechanical manipulation of the soil and plant residues to prepare a seedbed for crop planting. The benefits of tillage are many: it loosens soil, enhances the release of nutrients from the soil for crop growth, kills weeds, and regulates the circulation of water and air within the s...

A functional approach to predicting shifts in weed floras in response to management or environmental change requires the combination of data on weed traits with analytical frameworks that capture the filtering effect of selection pressures on traits. A weed traits database (WTDB) was designed, populated and analysed, initially using data for 19 common European weeds, to begin to consolidate tra...

eld to prepare for planting, while the tractor and crew on the right are planting trees. This method provides a weed-free soil immediately after planting for preemergence herbicide applications. W eeds reduce the value of nursery crops. They compete with crops for nutrients, light, and water. Some vine weeds climb nursery crops, requiring excessive labor for hand removal. Most serious are peren...

Weedy and invasive plants cost Americans billions of dollars annually in crop damage and lost earnings. Various Western states have reported annual weed control costs in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Herbicides account for more than 72 per cent of all pesticides used on agricultural crops. $4 billion was spent herbicides in the US in 2006 and 2007 (Grube, et al, 2011). The USDA Economic ...

Phytopathology is concerned with the prevention of crop losses due to pathogens in agricultural plant populations and with plant population biology regarding the understanding of the causes of changes in numerical abundance and gene frequency in wild plant populations (1). In line with this separation of the two research fields, pathosystems were divided by Robinson (12) into artificial (crops)...

Managing production environments in ways that promote weed community diversity may enhance both crop production and the development of a more sustainable agriculture. This study analyzed data of productivity of maize (corn) and soybean in plots in the Main Cropping System Experiment (MCSE) at the W. K. Kellogg Biological Station Long-Term Ecological Research (KBS-LTER) in Michigan, USA, from 19...

Sesame is a relatively new grain crop being grown in Florida. This publication discusses rotational considerations and herbicides for use sesame. Written by Jason Ferrell Pratap Devkota, published the UF/IFAS Agronomy Department, revised April 2021.