Written by Charlotte Cunningham
Crops are now more vulnerable to weeds than before the advent of herbicides, according to a new study which says weeds pose an unprecedented threat to our food security. Charlotte Cunningham reports. Using data from the world’s longest running experiment, the Rothamsted Broadbalk wheat trial in Herts, the researchers found that, on plots where herbicides have never been used, yield losses to weeds have been consistently increasing since the 1960s. Less than a third of the harvest was lost to weeds in the first ten years of the dataset, but between 2005-2014, this had risen to more than half. The team from Rothamsted Research who carried out the study, say this is due to weeds doing better than crops in a warming climate, coupled with a shift towards shorter crop varieties that get shaded out by the taller weeds. And just like crops, many weed species have also benefited over this period from increased use of nitrogen fertilisers. In addition, more than half a century of consistent chemical spraying has also led to the rise of herbicide resistant weeds, threatening our ability to protect the gains in crop productivity achieved since the 1960s. “Reducing yield losses from weeds is increasingly challenging…
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