IARN — Many farmers made their way to Logan, Iowa on Wednesday to learn about ongoing weed resistance management projects and trials.
The Harrison County Pest Resistance Management Project team held a field day at the Larry Buss farm southwest of Logan. ISU Extension field agronomist Mike Witt tells IARN that 10 herbicide programs were available for comparison to evaluate success and implications for resistance management of weeds including waterhemp, marestail, giant ragweed and Palmer amaranth.
“We’re really walking through a demonstration of different herbicide programs and herbicide strategies,” said Witt. “Do we have a preemergence or do we not have a preemergence? Do we have a light preemergence program or robust? We’re also looking at some different post-emergent application processes and programs intermixed with those.”
Witt says the Iowa Pest Resistance Management Program is based on communities coming together.
“Farmers are notorious for being individuals,” said Witt. “They are all individual entities and their own businesses and things like that. They run their weeds the same way. Their weed resistance and their week control all kind of goes in amongst themselves, but we need to try to break that mold and understand that people can talk to one another. We can share some of those management strategies so that we as a group and community can work better to further ourselves in controlling where we do see some of this resistance developing really fast.”
The Harrison County project includes team members from Iowa Corn Growers Association, Agriland FS, BASF, Asgrow/Dekalb, Heartland Coop, FCSAmerica, Midstates Bank, Iowa Farm Bureau Federation, Iowa State University, and local farmers.
A full video feature from Wednesday’s field day can be viewed below from IARN’s YouTube channel.
Story courtesy of the Iowa Agribusiness Radio Network
