The existence of herbicide-resistant weeds is not new, but in the last 10 years the problem has grown worse. And just one newly-resistant weed may now be cause for significant concern, as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Cindi Deutschman-Ruiz reports:
Transcript
The existence of herbicide-resistant weeds is not new,
but in the last 10 years the problem has grown worse.
And just one newly resistant weed may now be cause
for significant concern, as the Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Cindi Deutschman-Ruiz reports:
Penn State weed specialist Bill Curran says horseweed is
the first kind of North American weed that has shown it can
survive the use of the weed killer glyphosate. Glyphosate is
the active ingredient in RoundUp and other widely used
herbicides.
Resistance to the chemical was first spotted in six fields in
Delaware in the year 2000. It has since moved into at least
half a dozen states. In an affected field, glyphosate may
still kill thousands of horseweed plants, but leave a few
intact and able to reproduce.
“I think what’s unique about the glyphosate case is
there really isn’t anything that’s quite like it. What
typically people have done is they’ve tried to substitute one
thing for something else, and there isn’t really a substitute
for this.”
Still, Curran says farmers’ best option is to frequently switch
the chemicals they use, and stop relying so heavily on
glyphosate. Otherwise, he sees the problem of super strong
weeds continuing to spread.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Cindi
Deutschman-Ruiz.