SUSWECO – Sustainable weed control in cereals

To create a more sustainable future for humanity, it is imperative to reduce the ecological footprint of our production systems. One great challenge for agricultural production is balancing the need for weed control with preserving soil health and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. In particular it is important to reduce the reliance on herbicides to control weeds, not only because of potential environmental and health concerns, but also because of the increasing prevalence of herbicide resistance coupled with fewer and fewer herbicides being available. For example, a ban on the world’s most common and most broad-spectrum herbicide, glyphosate, is currently being discussed in the EU, which would greatly reduce the effectiveness and flexibility of chemical weed control. At the same time, the use of tillage to control weeds must also be reduced as it can reduce soil health for example by increasing the risk of erosions and nutrient leaching and damage soil aggregates.

Perennial weeds such as creeping thistle, couch grass and perennial sow-thistle are particularly difficult to control without herbicides or intensive tillage.

SUSWECO have innovative proposals for developing cropping systems that can control perennial weeds without herbicides, while preserving soil health and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. SUSWECO will focus on combining subsidiary crops (e.g. cover crops) and a new innovative tool (the Kverneland Group’s root cutter) for sufficient weed control in cereals. The new root cutter makes it possible to combine the use of cover crop and tillage against weeds, with minimal soil disturbance. The cover crops will compete with the weeds, while keeping the soil covered over autumn and winter, reducing nutrient leaching and erosion, and increasing soil carbon sequestration and long-term soil fertility.

SUSWECO will a) test the combination of the new root cutter implement with cover crops. Both its efficacy against weeds, but also to measure the energy needs of the new root cutter implement; b) test alternative methods to herbicides for terminating the cover crop prior to establishing a new crop (otherwise glyphosate and/or ploughing is usually used), c) and develop new image analysis software for site-specific weed control that also work in cover crops (previous methods are primarily adapted to cover crop free cropping situations).