Herbicide discovery in light of rapidly spreading resistance and ever-increasing regulatory hurdles.

According to the United Nations, the global population is expected to grow to almost 10 billion people in 2050. This means that the demand for food, feed and fiber will double while at the same time, agriculture is being challenged by a scarcity of water, global warming, less land available for farming, protection of natural habitats, a demand for biodiversity on farms and other factors. In addition, crop protection products are under pressure from rapidly spreading resistance and increasing regulatory requirements.

Herbicide resistance-what have we learned from other disciplines?

Herbicide resistance is a growing threat to agriculture and has parallels to resistances to fungicides and insecticides. However, there are many reasons to treat the resistance to herbicides differently. To highlight these similarities and differences, three pests, a weed, an insect, and a disease that have shown the ability to rapidly develop resistance to a variety of products and product classes were used as illustrations.

Herbicides as weed control agents: state of the art: II. Recent achievements.

In response to changing market dynamics, the discovery of new herbicides has declined significantly over the past few decades and has only seen a modest upsurge in recent years. Nevertheless, the few introductions have proven to be interesting and have brought useful innovation to the market. In addition, herbicide-tolerant or herbicide-resistant crop technologies have allowed the use of existing nonselective herbicides to be extended into crops.

Characterization of glyphosate resistance in Amaranthus tuberculatus populations.

The evolution of glyphosate-resistant weeds has recently increased dramatically. Six suspected glyphosate-resistant Amaranthus tuberculatus populations were studied to confirm resistance and determine the resistance mechanism. Resistance was confirmed in greenhouse for all six populations with glyphosate resistance factors (R/S) between 5.

Improvement in day zero recoveries in field soil dissipation studies using larger diameter soil samples.

Obtaining acceptable recovery of the applied test substance at zero time in field soil dissipation studies has been a subject of considerable interest among scientists conducting regulatory field studies. In particular, achieving recoveries of ≥90% in soil samples collected immediately after applications in most studies has been elusive. This study investigated a modified soil sampling method, which could be used not only on day zero but for the entire study duration, to see if the recoveries in soil samples, especially in the early stages, can be improved.