Australian farmers have been fighting herbicide-resistant weeds possibly longer than farmers here in the United States, and they have developed tools to prevent the random distribution of weed seed during harvest operations.
One of those tools is a chaff cart, which spiked interest with Jason Norsworthy, a professor of weed science at the University of Arkansas. The cart is a large “boll-buggy” type of implement and Norsworthy had the Harrington Seed Destructor built in Fayetteville in 2013, according to Southwest Farm Press.
“We’ve done some work on Palmer amaranth, also known as pigweed, where we found that about 99 percent of the pigweed seed that is harvested during the combining operation actually goes into the combine, and a good portion of that is going to exit the combine and be spread back on to the field,” Norsworthy said.
The chaff cart was tested during soybean harvest and was quite successful in catching the pigweed seed and destroying those during the burning operation.
The key to resistance management is bringing down the soil seed bank with a better tool than chopping and hand removal.