Developing a Petri dish test to detect resistance to key herbicides in Lolium rigidum

Abstract

Overreliance on herbicides for weed control is conducive to the evolution of herbicide resistance. Annual ryegrass (Lolium rigidum Gaud.) is a species that is prone to evolve resistance to a wide range of herbicide modes of action. Rapid detection of herbicide-resistant weed populations in the field can aid farmers to optimize the use of herbicides for their control. The feasibility of a portable agar-based test to rapidly and reliably detect annual ryegrass resistance to key herbicides such as clethodim, glyphosate, pyroxasulfone and trifluralin on-farm was investigated. The three research phases of this study show that: a) easy-to-interpret results are obtained with non-dormant seed from well-characterised susceptible and resistant populations, and resistance is detected as effectively as with traditional dose-response pot-based resistance assays. However, the test may not be suitable for portable use on-farm because of b) the low stability of some herbicides such as trifluralin and clethodim in agar and c) the tendency of seed dormancy in freshly-harvested seeds to confound the results. The agar-based test is best used as a research tool as a complement to confirm results obtained in traditional pot-based resistance screenings. Comprehensive agar test and / or whole-plant resistance tests by herbicide application at the recommended label rate (whole plants grown in pots) are the current benchmark for proactive in- and off-season resistance testing and should be promoted more widely to allow early detection of resistance, optimization of herbicide technology use and deploy appropriate weed management interventions.