In this episode of AHRI Snapshots, we catch up with an international guest. Dr Juan Vorster is an Associate Professor in Plant and Soil Sciences from the University of Pretoria, South Africa. Juan is studying herbicide resistance mechanisms in weeds and the development of effective management strategies for these weeds. He’s currently in Perth for a conference, so it’s a great opportunity to have a chat and learn more about his research. To learn more about Juan's research, visit the University of Pretoria's website.  You can follow AHRI on Twitter here. To learn more about AHRI's rese ..read more

In this AHRI Snapshots, we catch up with Principal Research fellow, Dr Qin Yu about her latest paper on glyphosate resistance in goosegrass.  This paper was published in Nature Communications in August 2023, which is an impressive achievement.  This paper is complicated, but essentially the researchers have found a hot spot on the genome of goosegrass that is a herbicide resistance generator. In this research, the team found that in glyphosate-resistant goosegrass the EPSPS gene was translocated to the sub-telomer region and duplicated many times there, leading to glyphosate resist ..read more

Over the last few years, the AHRI agronomy team has done extensive work looking at crop competition in hybrid and open-pollinated canola. Project lead, Dr Mike Ashworth, joins us on this podcast to discuss the findings on ideal seeding rate, variety, row spacing and seed size. Herbicides are currently working quite well in canola. We know that herbicide resistance is a real threat though, so we discuss what the current trends are in herbicide use in canola crops and what growers need to do to mitigate herbicide resistance.  You can follow AHRI on Twitter here. To learn more about AHRI's ..read more

In this episode, we’re catching up with visiting Associate Professor Todd Gaines. Todd is from Colorado State University and is currently working from UWA with AHRI.   Next month he’ll be at the International Plant and Animal Genome Australia conference in Perth city, where he’s organising a two-hour session of invited talks. Todd is also organising a subsequent workshop at UWA on September 22nd, which will have the theme “We have weed genomes, but what do we do now?”  While herbicides are the most effective and widely adopted weed management practice, the evolution of multiple herbi ..read more

In this interview we chat with AHRI Research Officer Roberto Lujan Rocha about the survey work he has conducted on the quality of water sourced on farm for spray application.  This project is a collaboration between University of Western Australia, AHRI and the Centre for Water & Spatial Science.  The team looked at water from bores, dams, desalinated water, rainwater tanks scheme water and waste water.   Roberto surveyed water sources in the mid to south West Australian wheatbelt in September 2022 and has recently completed surveys of water sources in the Merredin area of ..read more

On this episode of AHRI Snapshots, we’re catching up with former AHRI master’s student Geide Figueiredo (also known as JD) who worked alongside AHRI researcher Roberto Busi to try and break the herbicide cinmethylin, commercially known as Luximax.  Fortunately, they weren't able to break it, which is  great news for farmers and agronomists because it means that this herbicide is still working and resistance hasn’t developed. However, it’s always important to remember there’s no guarantee that resistance won’t develop, and the best way to prevent that is by using diverse weed control ..read more

This month on the podcast, we’re going to be finding out about the upcoming Herbicide Discovery and Development Conference, which is happening from January 18 to 19, 2023 at Curtin University. Due to genetic resistance to many of the most used herbicides, the need for new ones is greater than ever. This conference invites you to be part of the solution! University of Mississippi Adjunct Research Professor, Steve Duke, will be the keynote speaker on Thursday January 19. He’ll be talking on “Molecular targets of herbicides and insecticides – are there overlaps that can be useful?” He joins us ..read more

Don't stop thinking about tomorrow is the theme of the upcoming Crop Protection Forum in Wagga Wagga next month. In this AHRI Snapshots, we catch up with event organiser,  Dr Lizzy Lowe, who is the Senior Extension Scientist for Cesar Australia.  This event is held annually, with this year’s partners being The Centre of Crop Disease Management (CCDM), the Australian Herbicide Resistance Initiative (AHRI), and The University of Melbourne with support from the GRDC. Attendees will hear from Australia’s leading experts on insecticide, fungicide, and herbicide resistance at the upcoming ..read more

In this AHRI Snapshots we catch up with Martin Vila-Aiub, who was co-author on a recent publication that our latest AHRI insight covers.  It’s all about how highly glyphosate resistant plants can’t compete. AHRI researchers recently teamed up with Martin Vila-Aiub from Argentina and other researchers from Brazil to investigate the combination of crop competition and glyphosate on glyphosate-resistant goosegrass. Competition alone from Soybeans reduced the growth of plants with the TIPS mutation by 95%, and the addition of glyphosate actually made these plants grow a little better! You ..read more

AHRI’s Dr Roberto Busi talks about his finding of velocity resistant wild radish in this podcast.  It’s not great news for growers – but knowledge is power.  At the end of 2019, Roberto Busi started a new herbicide resistance testing service based at UWA. Growers and agronomists sent in about 500 samples of ryegrass for testing as well as 121 samples of wild radish. Two of these wild radish populations, sampled by agronomists, had survivors to Velocity® and Roberto embarked on extensive glasshouse and field testing. Resistance testing and using diverse tactics, as found in the Weed ..read more