Crop rows oriented at a right angle to sunlight direction (i.e., east–west within the winter cropping system in Western Australia) may suppress weed growth through greater shading of weeds in the interrow spaces. This was investigated in the districts of Merredin and Beverley, Western Australian (latitudes of 31u and 32uS) from 2002 to 2005 (four trials). Winter grain crops (wheat, barley, cano...

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...

The use of glyphosate, as a post-emergence broad-spectrum herbicide in genetically modified glyphosate-tolerant (GT) cotton, supposes a big change in weed management programs with respect to a conventional regime. Thus, alterations in arable flora and arthropod fauna must be considered when evaluating their potential impacts. A 3-year farm-scale study was conducted in a 2-ha GT cotton crop, in ...

Field experiments were conducted to study weed population shifts in long-term conservation tillage systems. The objectives of this study were to determine weed community abundance, diversity and composition on conventional tillage (CT), minimum tillage (MT), no-tillage with paraplow (ZT) and no-tillage (NT) systems, and to identify species that are associated with specific tillage systems. The ...

Modern weed science is at a crossroads. Born out of advances in chemistry, it has focused on minimizing weed competition with genetically uniform crops and heavy reliance on herbicides. Paradoxically, the success obtained with such an approach and the reluctance to conduct integrated and multidisciplinary research has resulted in unintended, but predictable, consequences, including the selectio...

Preventing the introduction of weeds into the farming system through sowing of clean seeds is an essential component of weed management. The weed seed contamination of cleaned grain and herbicide resistance levels of the recovered weed seeds were examined in a study conducted across 74 farms in the Western Australian grainbelt. Most farmers grew and conserved their own crop seed. The majority o...

Weeds tend to aggregate in patches within fields, and there is evidence that this is partly owing to variation in soil properties. Because the processes driving soil heterogeneity operate at various scales, the strength of the relations between soil properties and weed density would also be expected to be scale-dependent. Quantifying these effects of scale on weed patch dynamics is essential to...

Competitive crop cultivars offer a potentially cheap option to include in integrated weed management strategies (IWM). Although cultivars with high competitive potential have been identified amongst cereal crops, competitiveness has not traditionally been considered a priority for breeding or farmer cultivar choice. The challenge of managing herbicide-resistant weed populations has, however, re...

We studied the heterogeneity of soil weed seed-bank in a rice-wheat rotation system after long-term application of different organic or non-organic fertilizers, and the effects of major nutrients on the characteristics of the weed seed-bank. The soil was sampled in the Taihu area after a 31-year long-term fertilization experiment. Weed seeds were identified and counted in the surface soil of 12...

Organic farming has been identified as promoting soil quality even though tillage is used for weed suppression. Adopting zero tillage and other conservation tillage practices can enhance soil quality in cropping systems where synthetic agri-chemicals are relied on for crop nutrition and weed control. Attempts have been made to eliminate tillage completely when growing several field crops organi...