We're the Australian Herbicide Resistance Initiative (AHRI), a research team based at UWA with investment from @theGRDC. More crop, fewer weeds - sustainably!
Perth, Western Australia
Joined November 2015
- Tweets5K
- Following803
- Followers5K
- Likes2.6K
Weeds in crop? Weed seed samples now being accepted by the @resistance_test
Keith Richards has done it! How do we get our herbicides to live hard and die old like Keith? A: Rotating buys you time, but mixing herbicides at full rates buys you more shots as crop weeds are rarely resistant to two or more herbicides. buff.ly/kNjW0WR #weedmanagement
Weeds cost Australian cereal growers more than $4 billion annually. New incursions, rising herbicide resistance & area-wide outbreaks are being tackled with a mix of integrated weed management tactics. Review your control plan: buff.ly/souZ0Xl #WeedManagement #AgTech
In Australia we've relied on herbicides to battle crop weeds. Predictability was our weakness — resistance emerged and the dragon gained ground. Stay tuned to AHRI Insight for tips on how we can fight the dragon. #AHRI #weedresistance
Is the next frontier in crop protection being able to interrupt plant biochemical pathways? We tested herbicides to find 2,4‑D synergists against resistant wild radish. Spoiler-we only learned what didn't work buff.ly/C22kzml
📍 Avondale, WA — GGA Future Drought Hub field trial exploring the benefits of intercropping. Both plots had identical management and received 0 units of nitrogen. #Intercropping #DroughtResilience
We've explored how weeds compete—but can we select cultivars to compete with each paddock's unique weed profile? PhD researcher Aung Sing will rank wheat cultivars from Western Australia to pinpoint plant architecture traits that best suppress weeds. #WeedScience #Agriculture
Velocity® resistant wild radish? It can be controlled with tank mixes, but they need the right mix. Growers & agros sent 376 wild radish samples from WA locations with suspected resistance and we tested each sample with 21 herbicides & mixes. Read results buff.ly/3rpVvim
Brome grass germination is varied; NSW shows greater variation than WA: some populations germinated with WA's, others staggered over a month, and a few produced seedlings months later. Late seeds remained viable and responded to dormancy‑breaking treatments.
Did you know prosulfocarb is not a herbicide until plant enzymes convert it into prosulfocarb sulfoxide? True. And if you have prosulfocarb resistance, trifluralin resistance might vanish? See 2024 AHRI insight: buff.ly/MNKachR #WeedScience
In WA's last random paddock survey 26% of cropping fields in WA contained wild radish and no populations had resistance to glyphosate. This @thegrdc research is ongoing with results updated on our website. buff.ly/jrP3pbf
We often overlook slow shifts in our cropping systems until it's too late. AHRI delivers actionable research to help farmers and agronomists curb herbicide resistance and control the weed seed bank. buff.ly/bQMAKIV #WeedManagement #HerbicideResistance
We know some weeds are herbicide resistant but also dormant (germinate later). AHRI is working to understand the evolutionary pathways by mapping the coevolution of dormancy and herbicide resistance. #agtech #cropweeds
Imagine being able to forecast where weeds will emerge in the paddock. AHRI is developing a model to predict shifts in weed patches using historical dispersal and emergence records. #AgTech #Weeds @Mike_AHRI
ALT Wild radish plants in Canola crop
At AHRI, we use computer and mathematical models to simulate plant population dynamics to reveal the ecological and evolutionary drivers of herbicide resistance and weed spread. We anticipate these insights will inform long-term weed management strategies. @Mike_AHRI #WeedScience
ALT Model diagrams show simulated weed patches which are used to train statistical models to predict where weeds will emerge in the paddock.
Ongoing research in @theGRDC Next Gen project is using spatial data to predict high-risk weed locations. @Mike_AHRI #weeds #precisionagriculture
Visiting scholar @MartinVilaAiub from University of Buenos Aires is working with AHRI scientists evaluating Australian ryegrass tolerance to PPO herbicides across different temperature ranges. #WeedScience #Herbicides
ALT Looking at PPO herbicides and control of Australian ryegrass
AHRI post-doc Hugo Salinas-Matus is a theoretical ecologist. Hugo works on understanding how organisms interact with each other and with the environment and what are the consequences of this interaction. #ecology #modelling
ALT Spot spraying can reduce the use of herbicides, but it may also result in some weedy areas that are untreated. This project aims to understand if this can be a problem in terms of the evolution of herbicide resistance. By changing the effectiveness of spraying, or the characteristics of weeds we can study how the increase in resistance levels and weed population sizes changes
Random WA weed surveys in 2003, 2005, 2010, 2015, 2020 and 2024 tracked problem species like ryegrass, wild radish, wild oats, barley grass, bromegrass and fleabane. See the trends: buff.ly/jrP3pbf #WeedManagement #GRDC
