Smaller agricultural fields, more edges, and natural habitats reduce herbicide-resistant weeds

GARIBALDI, LUCAS A.; GOLDENBERG, MATÍAS G.; BURIAN, ALFRED; SANTIBAÑEZ OSSA, FERNANDA; SATORRE, EMILIO H.; MARTINI, GUSTAVO D.; SEPPELT, RALF

AGRICULTURE, ECOSYSTEMS AND ENVIRONMENT

ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV

Lugar: Amsterdam; Año: 2023

0167-8809

The exponential growth of herbicide-resistant weeds poses enormous challenges to the sustainability of food systems. While great efforts in weed management are being performed atthe plot level, the influence of the landscape context on the presence of herbicide-resistant weedsremains largely unknown. We tested these ideas through a large-scale sampling on two of themost important crops globally: maize and soybean. In Argentina, we co-developed with farmersthe sampling of 2,846 soybean and 1,539 maize fields (covering an area of 159 million ha) andmeasured the presence of herbicide-resistant weeds, landscape context (field size, edge density,natural habitat size), management variables (e.g. fertilization), crop variety, farm identity andregion. We found that smaller fields, with higher edge density, and neighboring larger natural habitats were associated to a lower presence of herbicide-resistant weeds. These results were notconfounded with the influence of some other management variables (e.g. fertilization), cropvariety, farm or region. Landscape design is an important, but underrepresented, managementtool that could help to achieve a sustainable control of weeds.