Last updated 2 July 2024. Paul McIntosh, Pulse Australia and WeedSmart.
Just when you believe you can get weeds under control by adopting the WeedSmart big six tips and tactics, and investing in the Aussie explosion of sensor cameras in our paddocks, the weeds decide to employ a new survival tactic called mimicry.
Yes, I had to look it up for an exact meaning too! Researchers are finding this phenomenon where weeds are evolving to look similar to the crop they are found in.
That finding could certainly put a dampener on our green on green weed control system, where camera or visual technology identifies the weed as the application spray rig moves over the crop and switches on that particular spray nozzle for a short time.
This fast developing process called site specific weed management technology certainly reduces overall herbicide application onto various crops and in Australia we certainly have these camera sensitive spray rigs operating in-crop already.
A smart young Aussie researcher who is friend of mine known as Guy “Geezer" Coleman is working with a team in Europe to understand how this weed mimicry could affect us in the Aussie agricultural community with our dreaded annual ryegrass weed in our wheat crops.
There are plants or weeds already in the world doing this mimicry, like rice and barnyard grass, sorghum and Johnson grass and some corn and other weedy Zea species.
Guy and his team explained the three components for this mimicry process to develop - the model or crop being imitated, the weed that imitates the crop and the agent or dupe that is fooled by the mimic. Interestingly, this dupe part could be the human eye or image-based weed termination technology. As Guy says, when the dupe like you and me or the AI camera sensor cannot tell the crop and weed apart, the mimic weed wins the battle and its genetics are passed to the next generation.
Could it mean that when Paul McIntosh walks through a winter cereal crop, he cannot tell the difference between an annual ryegrass plant and a wheat plant? Yes, that is exactly what it means, as we have observed already around the world with barnyard grass in rice paddocks evolution, that are mostly hand weeded.
My photo of a explosion of Urochloa and Barnyard Grass seedlings after a wet spring will certainly bring tears to my eyes if I cannot ID it from a White French millet plant,so hopefully clever dedicated agricultural researchers like Guy Coleman can develop Plan B to still control our weeds in our farming pursuits. Our farming community on earth needs to grow and supply food for a world where grain production is becoming more vital for the nearly eight billion people on earth .
That’s all folks.
A plethora of Urochloa grass weeds in a Darling Downs paddock