What if you accidently sprayed the wrong herbicide? Agronomists of yester-year developed a handy trick. They found that if they accidently sprayed an oat crop with Hoegrass® (diclofop-methyl), they could stop crop damage in its tracks if they quickly applied 2,4-D. The grand question is…does it actually work? The ‘myth’ says yes. What does the science say? The AHRI Mythbusters team got the answer! In this latest AHRI research, Dr Heping Han and others found that when they pre-treated ryegrass with 2,4-D amine it became resistant to Hoegrass®. This is likely due to 2,4-D causing a spike in P450 activity…

What is a P450? Is it a car from the 70’s that fits a 44 gallon drum in the boot? No, that would be a P76. A P450 is an enzyme that eats herbicides. In fact, there are literally hundreds of P450 enzymes and some of them can chew on some herbicides, resulting in enhanced herbicide metabolism (metabolic resistance). We are now seeing an increased effort around the world to better understand metabolic resistance involving P450 enzymes. In 2005, Dr Paul Neve showed that ryegrass could quickly develop resistance after being sprayed with low doses of Hoegrass® (diclofop). Some recent…

Most of us are a bit slow out of bed on a cold morning and take a little while to get moving. Weeds are no different. Some glyphosate resistant weeds become less resistant in cool weather. One of the mechanisms of resistance to glyphosate is to reduce the movement of the chemical through the plant (known as translocation). Researcher Dr Martin Vila-Aiub and others from AHRI tested annual ryegrass and Johnsongrass with this resistance mechanism. They found that the plants were much less resistant to glyphosate when the plants were grown in cool conditions. The good news? If you know…