Principles of Weed Management

Catalog description

The study of weeds and their management is a challenging and demanding task that requires diverse abilities. The term weed is an anthropocentric construct meaning it is a human colored definition. We will study the biology and ecology of weedy plants drawing on examples from a wide range of plant systems; those systems include agricultural fields (agronomic and horticultural crops) and forests. Of course our knowledge of the biology and ecology of weedy plant populations will then be used to underpin and assess control tactics and their integration. The discipline has a history of equating management with herbicidal control and in fact some 80% of the pesticides used in U.S. agriculture are herbicides. However through novel farmer designed management systems, through a research community focused on alternative methods of management and through increased focus on invasive species, exciting breakthroughs are occurring in alternative methods of management and prevention. This course seeks to introduce you to the breadth of management approaches in use and under study. The specific objectives are for students to describe and identify: 1) the local weed flora, 2) the fundamental aspects of weed biology and ecology relevant to managed landscapes, 3) the control methods used in managing weed populations, 4) how control measures can be integrated to accomplish acceptable levels of pest suppression, 5) operationalizing a weed management plan, 6) how herbicides enter and move to their site of action in plants, 7) classifying herbicides by their site of action, and 8) the distinction between herbicide concentration in soils and plant available herbicide concentration.