05/10/06 Goatgrass Control

Goatgrass mowing control. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. Jointed goatgrass is a problem for wheat farmers across the Pacific Northwest. If left unchecked it can cut into yields. Since it closely resembles wheat and is in fact closely related to wheat it makes it more difficult to control. Farmers have found that mowing has been a fairly effective and cost efficient means of controlling the weed. Don Morishita from the University of Idaho says a recent study may help farmers with the control of the jointed goatgrass. MORISHITA: And we have always told them go in there and when this stuff heads out, go in and mow it down and that should take care of your problem. Well based on our research if a grower waited until the jointed goatgrass headed out before they went in and mowed it or tried to cut it down whatever, it could actually still be some jointed goatgrass that would be mature enough that the seed could germinate. And so based on our research we're now recommending that if you're going to mow it you'd probably better do it a little sooner than before the heads are fully emerged. He also cautions from mowing the jointed goatgrass too early. MORISHITA: Of course you don't want to mow it too soon, too early because you could actually get jointed goatgrass could regrow from that and so you'd still have that problem. So that window of timing, of controlling it is a little bit narrower based on what we found with how soon jointed goatgrass seed could germinate after flowering. The research was conducted as part of graduate student project. MORISHITA: This is something that my graduate student Mike Quinn really spent a lot of time watching this jointed goatgrass grow. And so we did this in a controlled environment, in the greenhouse situation and he watched the jointed goatgrass develop. As soon as it began to flower he started harvesting heads from these plants for 30 days after flowering started. After a period of time we started running germination tests to see if there were any seed that were actually able to germinate. And as you would expect the longer the period of time after the goatgrass had flowered, the more germination; the higher the germination rate of the seed. We actually found a real small percentage of the seed that would germinate if they were cut 2 days after they flowered. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.