Location: Columbia Plateau Conservation Research Center
Project Number: 2074-21600-001-006-S
Project Type: Non-Assistance Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Jul 1, 2023
End Date: Jun 30, 2028
Objective:
Develop a geodatabase of weed distribution and total production of wheat across the Pacific Northwest over time to monitor and map herbicide resistant weed populations and create a grower focused educational tool to help in resistant weed management.
Approach:
A Geographic Information Systems (GIS) database will be updated from spatial geoportals for dryland wheat production, rotation crops and regions where herbicide resistant weeds have been found in Oregon, Idaho, and Washington of the Pacific Northwest, USA as part of the Pacific Northwest Herbicide Resistance Initiative (PNWHRI) team. Geomapping of dryland wheat and additional agricultural production regions will be achieved through multiple open-source spatial data portals. Due to the scale of the surveys and mapping, federal and state data (such as CropScape) will be utilized to create the databases of where wheat is produced and the rotation or changes in production year to year. State data portals that provide county level boundaries will be masked with federal data to allow for county level variation in wheat production and resistant weed populations. Utilizing spatial software such as the ESRI series (including ArcOnline) and Esri’s experience builder will allow for database creation and data displays for the PNWHRI research teams. Locational coordinates of herbicide resistant weed populations collected from surveys will be added as available layers where the weeds were found, the species of weed, and the type of resistance (Herbicide Group Number). As the survey and population data expands, the ability to assess resistance movement and analyze the spatial variation will increase. The collaboration across university and ARS scientists throughout the Pacific Northwest (PNW) will allow for greater understanding of the distribution of resistant weed species rather than a state-by-state approach. In addition, a grower focused web portal will be built as a tool to identify which counties have resistance and the type of resistance. Contact information for each county will be listed to enable growers to help improve resistance management.
The collection and testing of resistant weed populations will occur with a collaborative approach. Utilizing the mapping systems, a systematic randomized gridded collecting protocol could be used or a collection system based on weeds that survived herbicide applications. The gridded system will be used on a smaller scale approach to understand the spread of resistant populations where as the collection of surviving populations will be used to better understand the scale of resistance based on the species collected. Germplasm will be shipped to different universities for the purpose of determining the level of resistance using standard titration application approaches.
