Weeds and Berries

Friday Apr 26th, 2013 22 Views Fruit Grower Report

Weeds & Berries. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

Weeds are really nothing more than undesirable plants. But they can sure cause headaches for ag producers and Tim Miller, Washington State University weed scientist, has been doing a lot of research on weeds in regards to berries.

MILLER: We had a couple of different plans. The idea initially was me to go on sabbatical into Scotland and I knew these folks over there that were working on berry crops over there. I broached the subject with them about some potential looking at is there an effect of weeds beyond just the competition of the plants with whatever they’re growing.

Of course weeds can affect yields of crops but what about the quality and nutritional values?

MILLER: But we’d never really looked at the constituents of the fruit to get a sense for - do these weeds - just be the way they compete, does it have an impact on the ultimate fruit quality and antioxidants and things like that? Nobody’s ever looked at that directly and so we thought let’s take a snapshot here and see if it works

He spent five months in Scotland working with black currents and raspberries.

MILLER: So we were able to apply the technology we’ve learned through the black current into blueberries or strawberries or the other berry crops we produce here - grapes for that matter I guess. Look at the effect of particular weeds species on berry quality but then also to look at the herbicides that we use for various things, for weed control or in raspberries we use herbicides to manage cane growth.