Seed Prevention Technologies for Weed Management

Weed scientists are finding new seed prevention technologies to improve weed management, including target-site and metabolic resistance.

FREMONT, CA: Some microorganisms produce compounds toxic to these plants. To survive, these pigweeds formed enzymes to detoxify the substances. These enzymes also have a modern metabolic use. Some of these enzymes also detoxify herbicide molecules, enabling these pigweeds to render herbicides useless, akin to how corn metabolises atrazine as it slays broadleaf weeds. As a result, waterhemp and palmer amaranth resist many herbicide action sites. Metabolic resistance impacts mostly grasses and outsourced weeds, like waterhemp and palmer amaranth. Moreover, metabolic resistance development will slow in self-pollinated broadleaf weeds. All weeds usually have the potential to develop metabolic resistance.

This will spur weed management away from a herbicide focus and toward technologies emphasising fixing seed development, such as irradiated pollen and genetic weed seed modification. Scientists hope that the current years will mark the end of the chemical era of weed control.

Target-Site Resistance

Herbicides eliminate weeds by binding to an enzyme in an essential biochemical pathway. Target-site resistance disrupts this process and occurs when the gene encoding a specific enzyme changes its structure, so the herbicide no longer binds to it. This ensures the survival of a weed that, through its seed, creates more herbicide-resistant weeds. Target-site resistance to one herbicide allows weeds to resist other herbicides sharing the same target site. For example, waterhemp-resisting cobra will also resist flexstar from Group 14 herbicide.

Fortunately, target-site resistance does not confer resistance outside a herbicide group. For instance, group 14 resistance does not move to group 10 herbicides such as glufosinate and is manageable. Using effective herbicides in mixtures and annual rotations with different target sites delays the evolution of target-site resistance.

Meet Metabolic Resistance

Metabolic resistance works differently in unpredictable ways. Weeds use a multistep process involving several different enzymes to detoxify herbicides. Plants have different enzyme types that could potentially metabolise herbicides. It is not just one enzyme causing metabolic resistance; many enzymes working together will remove herbicide faster. This creates enzyme stacking, similar to seed stacks featuring herbicide-tolerant and insect-resistance traits.

After these enzymes gather in a weed population, they get stuck in it, stacking against each other, causing the effectiveness loss of several herbicides. However, this is also unpredictable as resistance can jump to other herbicide action sites. Metabolic resistance can encompass even unidentified herbicides. There were instances where companies had a new active ingredient that looked promising. When they tested them on pigweed populations, they found that the weeds already had metabolic resistance.

Metabolic resistance and its ability to form cross-resistance to multiple herbicide action sites complicate herbicide discovery. To combat this challenge, few companies use a scientific process addressing undirected randomness occurring through phenomena such as metabolic resistance. Organisations also have the ability to present new herbicides in the development pipeline against the different resistance mechanisms. This gives them the knowledge to assess the new active ingredient’s viability in the development process.

Check Out This : Pipe Line Management Services Companies