Music.
Welcome back to the War Against Weeds Podcast. I'm Joe Ikley, extension weed specialist at North Dakota State University. Co host today is Alyssa Essman at The Ohio State. How are you Alyssa?
doing Well, how are you, Joe?
Pretty good enjoying a nice fall day up here. Yeah. And then our guest today has been on a few times in the past, Dr. Larry Steckel down at University of Tennessee. But Larry, just in case people have not heard your past episodes, why don't you give us the rundown of what you do at Tennessee?
Okay, sure, Joe, yeah, did get to visit with you all today. So I am extension weed specialist here with the University of Tennessee, and I'm located over in Jackson, Tennessee, which is about five hour drive to the west of Knoxville, the mothership there, so and the reason this station and I'm here is, for those don't know the geography of Tennessee. Roughly 70% of our row crops lie between the Tennessee River to
the east and the Mississippi River to the west. So I'm right in the middle of that, about an hour drive for most of our row crops. So it makes it real handy, as opposed to being in Knoxville and driving five hours before you ever even start looking at fields. So that's where I am. Been here, gosh, 21 years now.
time flies when having fun or dealing with specific weed species, which is why we're having you on today Larry. So, so mentioned you're kind of in the heart of all that row crop production down there. And we, we thought we'd have you on. We we had this meeting about a month ago where all the extension weed scientists get together and compare notes. And during that meeting, you'd mentioned just some additional challenges that you facing with Palmer down Palmer Amaranth down
there, and that part of Tennessee. And probably been a year or two since we've had you on and had an update. So we thought it'd be a good, good idea to bring you back on and just kind of get some of those updates again. So I'm going to let you take it away on kind of the current state of what you're dealing with with Palmer Amaranth in Tennessee.
Okay, well, I'm not sure where I left it off last time. So the evolutionary process of that particular weed, Palmer amaranth, develop and resistance to herbicides continued at a pretty steady pace, and hasn't quit. So, you know, I could start back decades ago, if we want to. So back in the late 80s, that was kind of when the ALS resistance hit with Palmer Amaranth. I think it happened at the same time waterhemp, Joe, up, maybe up your way. I know Missouri and
Iowa for sure. And if you think about it, with Palmer Amaranth at that time, and waterhemp to the north, even they were not the major weeds. You know, back in the 80s, they it was cocklebur, it was Jimsonweed. It was, you know, a lot of the grasses, because, you know, when they have roundup pretty crops at the time, it was more Morning Glory type species. It really wasn't those pigweed species. And you kind of wonder if the ALS resistance, most notably down here in Tennessee, would
have been staple and cotton and scepter and soybeans. And of course, up further up the river, Mississippi River. It was going to be what pursuit, but anyway, they were used everywhere, and within a few years, Palmer amaranth and waterhemp became resistant to them. And that really kind of gave them the niche to basically stomp out all the other weeds. And they were the only ones, really the only ones that developed resistance, first the most, and they pretty much have dominated ever since,
right? And they found it no hard chore to develop resistance to another herbicide that we bring on after the ALS quit on us. You know, then glyphosate? Did you know about about 10 years later, like 2004 to 2006 range of 2006 is when we first found it here,
kind of in some palmer amaranth along the river bottom. Prior to that, when als has quit, there was a lot of Treflan being used in cotton, kind of North Delta. So kind of just north of Memphis on both sides of the river in Arkansas and Tennessee in the Blue Hill, Missouri, we had treflan resistance developed. So we had ALS resistance, then treflan resistance in that bio type, then glyphosate resistance show up. And then a few years later, Flexstar no longer worked. And that was, I remember
that was like 2011. I won't there was like, your sec, June 20, 2011 I just got my new cell phone, and it was, I had one phone call after another, and it was, it was, it was either consultants or retailers or farmers calling with fields that would just totally ate up with pigweed, because it just seemed like overnight glyphosate and then flexstar no longer work. So then the auxin traits come along right Dicamba and 2,4-D and back just now in '19 to '20 we've confirmed Dicamba and 2,4-D is
not working either on that particular bio type. And then we currently fast forward to this next year. So some of the worst areas where we traditionally along the river because of flooding, and folks can't get corn in very early. They pretty much in that river bottom, Mississippi river bottom, north of Memphis. They've been growing cotton and soybeans and that's pretty much all. They've been growing no corn in the rotation because they couldn't control pigweed anymore in those crops.
They've rotated the corn back last year, and I noticed in the fall, boy, there's a lot of pigweed in that corn after they run the combines through it. And so we get some screening this spring, and sure enough, Impact or Armezon (topramezone), even at three ounces the acre. So a 3x rate, I'm not getting 30% control and Atrazine at two quarts 50. So that kind of gives us evidence of why we're seeing pigweed in that corn. The
herbicides were using a corn not working either. So anyway, make a long story short, it's a lot easier to say what herbicides will work on that biotype and that Mississippi river bottom then, well, there's two. It's topramezone, or not topramezone it's pyroxasulfone, or Zidua or Anthem, or a paraquat, Gramoxone. That's it that actually worked, like the first
day you took them off the shelf. The other thing we've noticed herbicides like Dual and Warrant, and I think it's kind of additive problem, butwe're not getting five, six days of residual out of those on some of those bio types in there. So we had some research done in this past year. We went out and sprayed it. We sprayed it, and the rain cloud was coming on the horizon, and it got three quarters of inch of rain, I mean, within an hour of spraying it, so I got activated, and six
days later, it was just a carpet of pigweed. I've never seen anything like it. So it's, it's a mismatch of not many herbicides working. It's, we know, some of its target site resistance. I know that was one of your next questions, but probably the HPPD, the resistance, you know, the the Armezon, no longer working, dual and warrnat having very short shelf lives. It's probably metabolic, it would be my guess.
Jason northworthy, across the river, they documented the first, you know, dual warrant resistant pigweed and HPPD resistant pigweed a few years ago, and it turned out to be metabolic, and I'm pretty confident ours is as well. So they're just all stacked together. And we got a lot of very concerned farmers. They just don't know where to turn next, and I don't really have a good a good thing to tell them. So as far as where they do go, because we don't have a lot of options anymore,
yes, maybe before we get into that target site versus metabolic, a little bit more depth, trying to figure out the scale of this year. So said several farmers have the same concerns. So is it like a part of the geography you cover that these has these really bad bio types, or is it more widespread
It's, it's not, it's completely widespread than that. across the whole whole thing. It gets kind of hard to separate it, because almost all the pigweed in in West Tennessee and in middle Tennessee is resistant to ALS, is to glyphosate, PPOs, it's, it's just that kind of, that river bottom that we're not seeing the, you know, the duals and the warrants, type, type herbicides work, or the hppds work, stacked in there, and it
looks like it's on both sides of the river. And that's kind of, that's, that's kind of the Bermuda Triangle north of Memphis there. There's about three or four or five counties that, traditionally, that's where we find resistance developed first on pigweed, and really on the weeds too. But pigweed, for sure, it's in those river bottoms, and I don't know exactly why. I think a lot of it has to do with maybe flooding
levee system there's pretty low it floods most every spring. I think you get a lot more mixing and matching of pigweed, because it floats on the river right, and it creates in the RIP and the contributory so I think there's more genetic diversity of the pigweed. So there's a better probability of finding that one individual that's resistant to whatever herbicide you're using for a target site. Type resistance, this metabolic resistance. I don't think that's just isolated to the mid south
or this region. I think it's everywhere. I think it's it's been building real slow over the years to all the herbicides we've been using and and I think that's why we're seeing a little slippage with a lot of them in a lot of places. But you add that in with target site resistance, and you just totally have swings and misses out there using a multitude of herbicides. So.
Yes, I don't want things we'll sometimes discuss with metabolic resistance is, at least at the beginning, it might be pretty low level resistance to those active ingredients. And I know if I remember kind of some of the things you've discussed in the from finding Dicamba resistance and how it's kind of building now. I mean, I feel like that started as low level, but now I remember you had some comments that you're going with much higher levels of dicamba and still not getting adequate control.
Yeah, we've got a location or two now that it's, it's very high. It's about 14 fold resisted, so most of it's still fairly low level. You know, two, 2x 3x but, but we got a location or two where it's, it's double digit X resisted. So that's, that's in there. Some of the work being done on just the mechanics of that. It, it looks like it's more it's, looks like
it's, it's, it's probably target site. Mostly there's a gene, a gene or two, and I'm no expert on this, I think, if memory serves, it's one of the IAA genes in the plant that doesn't up regulate when it's exposed to Dicamba pigweed doesn't like it. The susceptible ones do. It's more mitigated, so you don't
have quite the response there. There also could be a little metabolic resistance tacked into it, and that level of metabolic resistance may somewhat tell us the level of overall resistance, because you get kind of an additive effect there.
So what I'm gonna kind of jump around the question list here as things pop into my head in different order, but So, so what are the folks that are dealing with this in cotton and soybean, well, maybe we'll start there and then circle back around to corn again. But you know, if you have applied a good group 15 or something, pre emergence and had this slippage after six days, what is the plan of attack, post emergence?
Uh panic? And that's actually real. I mean, I was down there. We've been doing research down that kind of those river bottoms for years. And had some farmers. I mean, I was out there, great, some tests, and they pulled me out of the field, and we went and looked at fields, and basically had a kind of emergency round, you know, on the turn row, on options they had. So some of it's getting the cultivator out. We've been doing
that. Some of it is being created now. Pyroxadulfone (Zidua) cannot be put over the top of cotton because of injury, but it can be put on via fertilizer. And boy, a lot of folks have really went with that, applying it with fertilizer over their cotton, and that's really worked well. And then running hoods, in our 30 intro ride cotton, running hoods, and you can get paraquat underneath the hood in cotton,
and it does very effective job. There's other things that they can mix and match with, too liberty with a photosystem, two inhibitor like diuron, something like that, also seems to work very well. So those are some options over our soybeans and over the top of cotton. One thing we've seen is, though our Palmer amarath can't be controlled very well with Dicamba or with liberty, or with two 4d or with Liberty, the two
mixed together do work. And so we're seeing, you know, a good bit of that applied, you know, at the same time with, with enlist in liberty and extend crops, you know, just applying one right right after the other as quick as you can. It's been another option, and those have worked fairly well. You know, we're getting, you know, we're not getting 100% control with those, but we're getting in the 80s, which is beating the 30s, the 50s, we were getting before with just single AIs.
So for the extend system, what's your sequence on making the Dicamba glufosinate applications?
Uh, well, ideally it's two sprayers run at the same time, one behind the other, liberty and dicamba. If otherwise, you know, if it's a few days apart, it seems like, I don't know if there's a huge difference, but it seems like Dicamba first come back with Liberty a couple days later. It's worked fairly well. So those, those are last, best options we've got. We really don't have a lot post emergence other than those.
And just hearing pulling the hoods out, actually making applications one to three days apart. It's even on the sprayer technology going backwards a couple decades now, and other comparatively would what we would prefer to do, and the tank mixer had been doing,
yeah, exactly, exactly. And, you know, I got a one of one farmer or two that got, you know, the new John Deere see'n sprays, where you basically got two tanks, two sets of plumbing, two booms. You can spray dicamba and liberty at the same time. And you're actually on label. It's not a tank mix. So. So that works. So that's those are kind of our only options going forward.
So what about corn? So I know you mentioned the the issues with the Atrazine and some of the group 27 but few more products in the portfolio there, it could play around with. I don't know if you've been able to test those or hear what's working there.
Yeah, status seems to, you know, in the mix with with an HPPD or HPPD and Atrazine does work that cross resistance in our pigweed seems to be Dicamba, 2,4-D, but not necessarily Dicamba to status. So what is that, diflufenzopyr?,
Yep, yeah, yeah.
So that you know that's, that's, that's, that's a working thing that we can do in corn. We don't use a lot of status in Tennessee, but I think we're going to need to start and get that in the mix. So you know that that's some options. There higher rates of liberty. I like to refer to this the Texas rate. You know, that's the only way they make it work out there. It's so dry. Is what that 40? What 42 three ounce rate. But starting to push higher rates of it too will help.
Interesting with status, because I've got one Dicamba resistant waterhemp population that I work with,
and status doesn't touch that one. That's interesting, that that whole water hemp Palmer is that dynamics is interesting. We do have some Dicamba resistant water hemp over in Middle Tennessee. And actually, you know, you know, well, Bill Johnson did a lot of the testing on it for me. I just sent the seed up to him, and it was
interesting. So we saw in the field, he saw his research, but waterhemp was resistant to Dicamba, but it was not cross resistant to 2,4-D and that's different than the Palmer amaranth, because it has been for everything we tested to date. So that mechanism is a little different in water hemp, compared to Dicamba, or compared to Palmer and that's the one I've been working with, is similar, that 2,4-D just still smokes it, and then Dicamba status, basically, don't even
touch it over the top. So we have nicely the mechanism there, but just always interesting, those differences, that is interesting. Have you even looked at a lot of the other one thing I'm interested in is looking at a lot of the, you know, the pasture auxins that we're using, see what kind of cross resistance we'll see the, you know, DuraCore, you know, that kind of stuff. I'd be it'd be interesting to see how that shakes out on these. good graduate student project.
I think, yeah, got some growing in the greenhouse now, and I've got some graduate students, so maybe pull the trigger on some of those treatments. We don't, we don't have too much waterhemp find its way into pastures, but we have a wet year we drown out some areas, waterhemp will be what's remaining.
So sure, sure, yeah. Well, cows will eat waterhemp. They don't got no problem. They'll eat Palmer. Eat water hemp, not spiny.
so we'll go back into the the pre emergence products then, mainly because I didn't hear the the word metribuzin. So have you been able to test that one out on these populations you're working with?
Metribuzin still seems to be fairly effective, and it's the one of the things we can still use. And you know, as much as anything, just trying to dial in a rate that'll give you the weed control you want without banging up your soybeans too bad. So, and it's always kind of a moving target. I know you all know well, but it depends on the soil type, the growing conditions, the variety. There's a lot of things that go
into play. But, you know, look at most of the pre mixes out there, where it's metribuzin and something that rates for about four and a half, five and a half ounces on most of them is kind of what it ranges into. We probably need to be north of that to get the control we need from Metribuzin to pickup for the lack of things we're seeing with with like the duals and the warrants and the outlooks, that sort of thing. So, you know, probably need to be knocking up there, six ounces, seven ounces.
In some cases, I pushed it up 10-12, ounces. But then you get get some soybeans that don't like it so much. So there's a fine line there.
Now I'm curious soil types there, generally on the sandier side, or
a lot of silt loams, to erotic clay hillsides. We got a lot of erotic clay hillsides, and I see more Metro using injury on those erotic clay hillsides than I do in the silt loam. So you have to be careful before we start doing all this. No, till we had a lot of topsoil get moved out of these fields, and that's all that's left. So you really got to watch it right now with the wheat I'm getting all you know, calls on wheat, weed control and wheat and a lot of Metribuzin
goes out. And you got to be a little cautious on that rate, on those erotic clay hillsides, four ounces and you get a cold, wet snap. You.You can lose some wheat stands. So it's kind of interesting how that plays out. But a silt loam is fine. We don't have a lot of sand. There's some spots in the bottom where there's some sand that, yeah, you've really got to watch the rate but those road at Clay hillsides are, are where you got to be the most mindful on rate here.
That's going to be one. Potential set of good news
That's a good question. Yeah, they could. In there, because I know the other discussion we had at that meeting a month or so ago was the least when it comes to metabolic resistance with within Atrazine, it seems that the asymmetric triazine still works. So they seem to be in a
symmetrical or not so much. So, yeah. So, yeah, Atrazine is not what it used to be. Unfortunately, hasn't been in for residual for a long time, right for the enhanced microbial degradation that we see, but, but now, post emergence, we're starting to see slippage there too, trying to think who is the who is the registration for EVIC? That's still Syngenta. They could sell out of EVIC. fact, yeah, I think I got some I'm gonna try and play with. But
yeah, that's, that would be one. I think it may be Syngenta that has that.
Yes, Ametryn is also another asymmetrical triazine. That's that was a tip that I was told when we were messing around. We we imported some Palmer from some other areas, and Atrazine doesn't, doesn't even touch that population, but Ametryn definitely controlled it at field use rates. So we probably have that metabolic resistance to Atrazine and in our Palmer,
I would, yeah, I would think you probably do, really, if you look at a lot of stuff like Pat Tranel's been showing, I know you've had him on and visited with him, but it's everything he's done is it's very clear that we're really starting to segregate more and more genes into our weed population, particularly the pigweed population, for these metabolic genes that are, you know, one by themselves, maybe not enhancing the degradation so much of these,
of, uh, the reason of the herbicide, not, but you start getting multiple genes, and they do.
Alyssa, you're closer to Larry and I am. What's, what's your Palmer doing?
We don't have too much Palmer. We, I mean, around some dairies, you'll find it, but waterhemps are big issue, and I agree we're having some of the same issues with Atrazine. And that's actually an upcoming podcast topic, so we'll get into some of that soon. But yeah, I mean, we're still getting pretty decent control with group 27 right now. But if you know if trends are happening with elsewhere, I'm assuming that's coming for us as well.
I would think so. Yeah, Illinois kind of ate up with HPPD resistance right in maybe Iowa,
and we, we haven't confirmed any in water hemp here. Palmer's different. That's it's an imported, weird, different side story. But our water hemp, my biggest concern is we use a lot of hppds and wheat, and that's often that it's pre mixed with bromoxynil, but it's at lower use rates of
the HPPD than we would use in corn. And I'm seeing a lot more waterhemp escapes in wheat, and so that's kind of one of the growing concerns of mine, is just kind of monitoring those populations and seeing how hppds work, not only in wheat, but then when we go into the corn year and how waterhemp is responding. So not the scary levels Larry has yet, but it's definitely a growing concern. so given, given what you have, Larry, this is probably always tell people, it's hard for me to
paint a broad brush stroke. But what is the the best game plan that you can think of for dealing with these populations, and we'll just say in soybean or cotton, since those seem to be the majority of the acres.
The game plan going in is trying to never let them come up, because once they're up, we really don't have a lot of good options, so and then trying to stack a number of different residuals in there. I mean, we may not be getting the best residual out of dual and warrant, but we still need them in their bed. We still have a lot of grass issues. They bring
a lot of value to the table from those standpoints. But there's not relying on those, like you mentioned Metribuzin, using getting a healthy rate of that, and I mean if we are talking soybeans, you know, in so in cotton, it'd be more like a Cotoran or a Caparol and then seeing a lot more of these three way type pre mixes of soybeans here, which seems to have have some value. You know, a lot of times there'll be some
flumioxazin, in there, some valor. So kind of a, you know, that kind of a three way pre mix valor, Metribuzin, dual, something like that. Or some mixes and matches similarly, where you got you're going to any port in the storm, and so get. Three effective, at least partially effective, but herbicide modes of action try and keep it coming up, and then pyroxasulfone. I've told folks, know, when the roundup resistance stuff hit, you know, it blew up in a hurry, but we
didn't have pyroxasulfone. Then we do now and then, overlaying that on top of it, either in cotton with via fertilizer, or soybeans with a sprayer, really works well and just overlaying it and trying to get into where you can get some canopy cover and soybeans, most of our soybeans are narrow row. So you get out there 30 days and you're starting to see some pretty good shading. And that's a pretty good herbicide mode of action, right? So that's, that's kind of the game plans, trying to keep
it ever coming up. Because, you know, there's just no real good option post on these bio types, we're starting to see that's, that's going to be effective, you know. And then if you do post, you know, then it's, then it's a liberty with an enlist or, you know, Liberty and dicamba as quick as you can. I guess we'll see what happens with labels on that. That may not be viable this next year, but liberty and list for sure, and enlist crops, uh, tech, mix together and always mix liberty
in with enlist. Never go out with with enlist and round up. Yeah, that's that's just not going to work.
So think of some of the other non herbicidal tactics? Are there many weed seed destructors running down there yet?
No, no, I don't know of one here. So on that. From that standpoint, cover crops, we do have a good big cover crops, of course, getting them to come up, we talked about that a little bit ago, but getting them to come up and get in the stand. But cover crops can do a lot of work. We've done a lot of work with cover crops. I've had three graduate students that was a big part of their project with palmer amaranth,
integrating cover crops and herbicides. And they bring, they can bring a lot to the table, especially, seems like the further south you go. I mean, we can get lot of years. We can get some pretty decent biomass out of kind of a cereal rye, maybe with a vetch or crimson clover. You know, where we're getting it up waist high. Now you get down Culpepper in South Georgia, where they never have a winter. He'll get it six, seven foot
tall. He's got this huge carpet. We don't get that. But, you know, we can see just with the cover crop cutting down, the number of Palmer Amaranth come up by 50% that's a huge win. And if you incorporate a herbicide in there, a couple herbicides that can work through the mulch, you can get very, very effective control in a standpoint that you don't have any come up, or very few come up that you have to fool with with something post
emergent. So Cover crops are probably one of our better options from a non herbicide standpoint.
Not going to be easy.
nope, nope. Then getting cultivators back out. We're doing some of that. And
along those lines. How often do you recommend something like sending out a crew to go hand weeding? Or is that something people have options for?
yeah, there's some of that going on. You do
Gonna throw a side, side ball question here that I see some of that in some places, especially some of the folks that have cotton gins. That's That's for the crew in the summer, they can do some of that in some hot, hot spaces, so that that is an option, and would be, would be something to kind of implement in there as well. Have seen the electric weed shocker time you get enough height separation between the crop and where you can actually zap them with those electric weed
shockers? You know, the damage is pretty much done. Maybe can knock down seed production a little bit, depending on when you hit them and all. But that's that's another one. And those things are not benign to the crop. There's some collateral damage around those things. So that lightning strike that goes down and comes back up sometimes to take out a little bit of the
crop. But, and that's the, that's, those are the really kind of, the only things I think, from the non, no seed destructors here that I'm aware of, closest would be what, you know what Travis like lighter doing it just up in Princeton, just north of me, in Kentucky, they're doing some of that work. So we need something like that out of the box. So to help absolutely didn't send you ahead of time, but with with all the focus on
Palmer Amaranth for weed control. What's the situation looking like with your grasses, particularly the echinochloas?
We're seeing lots of issues. In fact, actually, grass weed control is my number one issue. It's not palmer amaranth and it's, it's, it's the it's the barnyardgrass. Complex. It's goose grass, those two really, and in Johnson grass on the summer side, and then rye grass in the in the fall,
winter. And it's, we've got a lot of glyphosate resistance in the in the population out there, and it's a growing and we really, in the last two or three years, kind of reached a tipping point on that where these grasses have really gotten out of hand. We're using clethodim, like we did before the roundup ready crops came on. Now that's, that's where we are trying, trying to control them. Clethodim is working fairly
well. But, you know, we're using, we're going after these pig weeds with, with, you know, Dicamba, some places, two, 4d, but particularly Dicamba in multiple applications, and that's hindering the control we get out of clethodim and glyphosate. So it's kind of a bad, bad situation when we look
at that trying to get any kind of consistent control. So trying to get some separation between a Dicamba application and a clethodim application is really necessary on, on the goose grasses, in the in the barn yard grass complex, so that, literally, clearly has been a big problem. One of the positives I can say about the grass issues, though, is we don't have any pigweed issues where we got bad grass problems, typically. So it's kind of a bio control agent, right? So that's
good, isn't that good? So, So, but anyway, that's kind of vice versa. In fields, they got a lot of bad pomegranates. You don't usually see a lot of grass. It's kind of interesting how that shakes out. There's pretty rare that they have both in the same field.
Well, there's the silver lining.
So, Larry, I do have one question here for you that we've been asking all of our podcast guests recently, at least this season, and that is, is there a silver bullet for weed control?
Yeah, no. Not that I know of. Please tell me if there is one. So No, no, wait, you're gonna have to the silver bullet is and it's not easy, like Joe said, but it's integrating cultural herbicides and those type tactics in together be the most effective way to try and do it. I think one thing we could do that would help us some and in the US we really don't do as much of it as they do other places, is just a little more crop diversity, I think would help. I had a
opportunity. It's been a few years ago now, went to Croatia and and did some work with them, on, on kind of helping them. We put out plots with them, test, test strips with them, on a no till they hadn't they till everything there. And what was probably most interesting to me is they were using pursuit and it and it worked like the first day that you pulled it off the shelf in the 80s. It killed everything, you know, and so
they had, didn't have resistance to any, any problem there. And, you know, they till, which is something we don't do in Tennessee. I think it's part of the reason we got reason we got more resistance issues in other places. That's a really good herbicide mode of action, right? But, but they didn't put the same crop on the same piece of real estate once in seven, eight years. They did sunflowers and corn and soybeans and sugar beets and alfalfa and wheat. And they just so they were always
they were forced to use more herbicides and other tactics. So that would probably help us, too. But where we're locked in our our big acre crops, I don't see that as a real good avenue.
Yeah, we've, we've got more crops up here, but I think the best I've heard is maybe five different crops on a on a field and rotation.
Yeah, these same two or two or three is definitely not helping out the situation. Yeah, it just, it made me. They had me go because I was a weed scientist, and yet, you know, no till takes a good wheat scientist, right? Well, they didn't need me at all. Herbicide worked great. So me and a couple county agents went it was, it was, it was really
interesting. But see pursuit work like it did when I was in, you know, grad school, and it was an experimental number, it was amazing, you know, so 25 years later, so, you know, it's just those weeds hadn't been exposed to it that much.
So were these, like really large operations. I'm trying to think, for that diversity, what are the equipment needs, or how much crossover is there between
It totally, because I, you know, Germany and a lot of those, there's a lot of really small England, lot of really small fields. These weren't small. These were ginormous, big fields. So I think this is kind of when they were, when they were previously under the communist regime, they they bought everybody out. So they made the small farms and the great big ones, huge laterals, um, you know, boy seemed like it took him a a week to turn, do turn, go from one
into the field and turn around and come back. So, big fields, several 100 acres, you. A field that kind of thing, even upwards of five, 600 so yeah, they had some really, really big fields, but they didn't have any problem rotating a lot of different crops.
There's the key big fields and lots of crops,
lots of crops, yeah, lots of crop diversity. So that can be one thing that would help. But I don't see us getting away, at least in my part of the world, cotton, corn, soybeans and wheat. I don't see that changing here.
Well, we are going to go ahead and bring this one home. So Larry, do want to thank you again for coming on. Always a pleasure to have you on good to talk to y'all and then also going to thank the listeners, and we'll catch you next time on the war against weeds podcast. As always, we thank you for listening to the war against weeds podcast. Just another reminder, you can find our podcast hosted on the Crop Protection Network, or CPN, for
short. So this is another great resource that's driven, by extension, scientists at different universities for pest management. And with that, we will see you next week on the war against weeds podcast. You.