There are a number of things from the 1970s few people wish to see return and wild oats it’s one of them.
Sixty-nine per cent of wild oats across the Canadian Prairies show herbicide resistance, said University of Saskatchewan plant scientist Eric Johnson.
With 27 per cent resistant to both Groups 1 and 2 herbicides — the products most commonly used to control them.
“From the ’70s up until the mid-’90s, the industry introduced a number of very effective wild oat herbicides,” said Johnson, speaking at the Lethbridge, Alberta-based Farming Smarter conference in December.
Why it matters: Once the oats developed resistance to Groups 1 and 2 herbicides, you are mostly limited to granular, soil-applied, pre-emergent herbicides.
And resistance to those have already been found in all three Prairie provinces.
“The thought was there would be a never-ending pipeline of new herbicides available to growers to control wild oats.
That did nott materialize and we haven’t seen any new modes of action since the mid-’90s or early 2000s.”
Once wild oats develop resistance to Groups 1 and 2 herbicides, growers are mostly limited to granular, soil-applied, pre-emergent herbicides such as Avadex or Fortress (both of which contain the Group 8 active ingredient triallate).
Group 3 herbicides such as Edge are also recommended for suppression of wild oats when applied in fall.
However, resistance in oats is an ever-moving target. Resistance to triallate, for example, has been found in all three Prairie provinces, said Johnson.
In a nod to an earlier era, the Wild Oat Action Committee of the ’70s and ’80s has been rebranded as the Resistant Wild Oat Action Committee (RWOAC).
In partnership with the Canadian Weed Science Society (CWSS.
Its goal is to educate and engage farmers to develop and adopt diverse approaches to managing wild oats.
Source: GrainNews