In late 2016 and early 2017, the Weed Science Society of America (WSSA) organized a series of seven "Herbicide Resistance Listening Sessions" around the country.
Brian Schutte (from New Mexico State University) and I co-hosted the Southwestern session in Tulare, CA on February 15, 2017 and, if you're a regular reader, this may sound vaguely familiar since I tried to drum up interest on the blog in November 2016 and Pratap shared his experience shortly after the workshop in 2017
The purpose of this series of sessions was to have a broad discussion on the issues with herbicide-resistant weeds and on the challenges of implementing herbicide resistance management. However, the format was different than many meetings and workshops in that it was designed to get the input of weed managers on their views of the issue and try to represent the breadth of the challenge across the country. Hence, "listening session" rather than "solutions and answers session".
Although it's taken a while for the information gathered to be analyzed, summarized, and written up, the final publications are finally available. I've attached four documents at the bottom of this post and included links below to the two "open access" articles in the journal Weed Technology:
- First, Schroeder et al. discuss the take-home messages gleaned from the seven session in an article entitled: "Managing Wicked Herbicide-Resistance: Lessons from the Field" (Weed Technol 32:475-488)
- Next, Schroeder et al. discuss the process of the listening session (and how studying people is different than studying plants) in the article "Managing Herbicide Resistance: Listening to the Perspectives of Practitioners. Procedures for Conducting Listening Sessions and an Evaluation of the Process" (Weed Technol 32:489-497)
- I've also attached below an editorial "titled "Critical Next Steps in Combating Herbicide Resistance: Our View" written by the WSSA Herbicide Resistance Committee chair David Shaw and his co-authors.
- Finally, the Executive Summary on the take-home messages from the 2016-17 WSSA Herbicide Resistance Listening Sessions boils it all down to the essence.
Thanks to all the participants in the Tulare meeting as well as the six other US locations - this was an interesting and eye-opening process. For my part, I was very glad to have the Southwestern workshop add unique perspectives to this national conversation about resistance, particularly given our diverse cropping systems and non-crop weed management challenges.
Happy reading.
Brad
Attached Files: