| We have seen a huge demand for herbicide-resistant crops for the
2001 growing season. With that in mind, we should go over a few preventative measures for
minimizing the chance of producing herbicide-resistant weeds.
1.) First and foremost, do not cut the recommended
rates of herbicides. When you were a young child, you were given vaccines.
What were these vaccines? They were small doses of the disease you were trying to
protect against. You were given a small dose to allow your body to respond by
fighting off the disease and now you are resistant to that disease. The same holds
true for weeds in our crops. Do not turn your chemical program into a vaccination
program.
2.) Be sure that you rotate your herbicide program
every few years. Do not use the same program year after year until suddenly things
go wrong.
3.) Do not forget about residuals. With the
decline in the amount of residual herbicides used, we have seen an increase in the amount
of winter annuals in the area. These weeds can be a real problem to plant through
come spring. Also, we speculate that our lack of residual use may be shifting our
weed spectrum to more of the later-emerging weeds that come up after a post-emerge
application, to weeds such as water hemp and prickly sida.
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