Extra 135 Non-chemical weed management - harvest and the weed seedbank

This arable extra discusses trial results from the 2024 herbicide screening trial at Kowhai Farm in Lincoln, Canterbury. 

Read the booklet from our September 2024 spring field events here. 

This report describes 2023 data from FAR’s ongoing herbicide screening trial at Chertsey, mid-Canterbury, where the efficacy and crop safety of a number of new and old herbicides were tested against several problematic weed species and in a number of common crops. This is the third consecutive year that FAR has run this trial, after a nine-year break.

This Arable Extra discusses the extent of herbicide resistance in weeds on arable farms in New Zealand based on the results of five years of random weed surveys.

Velvetleaf is still a concern and monitoring is ongoing.

If you missed our recent field day at our Kowhai Research Farm in Lincoln, check out the booklet here. 

The use of stale and false seedbeds fell out of favour with the advent of herbicides. However, they are now a resurgent tool for weed management, often providing simple, effective and low cost weed control. This Arable Extra outlines how these traditional weed control techniques can be used alongside modern ones. 

As herbicides become less effective and availability reduces, physical weeding is becoming a popular topic of conversation. This arable update outlines the differences between the two main classes of mechanical weeders: contiguous weeders that weed the whole field surface, and incontiguous weeders that treat the intrarow and interrow with different weeding tools.

Correct timing is critical to successful integrated weed management. This Arable Extra discusses the three timing windows that should be considered…time in the rotation, time in the crop growth cycle and time in the weed life cycle.

Integrated weed management (IWM) is a system level approach to managing weeds. It combines multiple control approaches into a single weed management programme. This Arable Extra explains physical, chemical, biological and ecological approaches and provides some examples of how they can be used.