Background
Herbicides continue to be the main means of weed control in Western Australia, despite alarming levels of herbicide resistance.
Integrated weed management (IWM) describes the means by which growers use a range of weed management practices at various times of the growing season to achieve acceptable weed control in the face of populations of herbicide resistant weeds.
The challenge is to determine how much IWM is necessary to reduce the reliance on herbicides to the point where herbicides become the secondary means of weed control.
This trial aims to achieve this by first creating a very low weed seed bank through soil inversion with a mouldboard plough, followed by crop competition, weed seed set and harvest weed management treatments to keep the weed seed bank very low.
Aim
To determine how much IWM is necessary to reduce the reliance on herbicides to the point where herbicides become the secondary means of weed control.