It allows a tractor and grain cart to respond to remote unload requests from a combine operator without an operator in the tractor seat.

Initially Agco made the somewhat surprising decision to introduce it first for John Deere 8R tractors, rather than one of its own.

Now the system is compatible with the Fendt 900 Series tractors as well.

When OutRun was first shown, Agco said it would eventually expand the system’s capabilities to include autonomous tillage. This year, that system becomes commercially available on the Fendt 900 tractors. This fall, it will also be available on the larger 1000 Series Fendts.

“We started with the 900 Series first,” says Brandon Montgomery, Fendt’s brand manager.

“It’s available in the grain cart version and tillage. Our next phase is the 1000 Series.

“On the 1000 Series, it’s unlocked from the factory for OutRun, so customers can order the 1000 Series with the OutRun system, but it’s physically installed. The completing parts will have to be physically installed at the dealership, and they will be available this fall, 2026.”

The system can handle implements with working widths up to about 55 feet. That is due to the vision limitations of the camera system the tractors use to “see” where they’re going.

However, there are no restrictions on which implements are used or from which manufacturer. The system works with any tillage implement from any brand.

The post OutRun tillage automation system released appeared first on Grainews.

He tells them two things:

• don’t hold your breath and
• you’ll need to work with what you have.

WHY IT MATTERS: Wild oats is a tough weed to control, with no one herbicide capable of tackling the Prairie pest.

“Do not expect any quick help on that front with wild oats,” said Micklich, precision ag specialist and owner of Progrow Agriculture in Vegreville, Alta., in a presentation at Agronomy Update 2026.

“It is an extremely complicated plant,” he said.

“It’s actually hexaploid, so it has six different sets of chromosomes. What that means is it’s extremely unpredictable on … how each chemical interacts with each other in the target sites. So it’s just an extremely hard plant to map out.”

But don’t despair. Cultural control practices — such as increasing seeding rates and adding an early-maturing crop to rotation — can go a long way towards removing these pesky oats from your field, he said.

“There is no shortage of options to be used in the fight against wild oats.”

However, producers may need to reconsider any “this is what I’ve always done” attitudes they may be harbouring, advised Micklich.

“We need to move to ‘what do I need to do? And how can I manage this?’ We need to be more long-term focused.”

READ MORE: Farm gets aggressive on wall-to-wall resistant wild oats

Herbicide-resistant wild oat (HRWO) is of “special concern” according to Alberta Grains. And for good reason: according to the most recent herbicide resistance survey, resistance is building and building fast.

The survey results reveal that 69 per cent of Alberta fields sampled for resistance in wild oat contain HRWOs.

Of that percentage, 62 per cent of fields are resistant to Group 1 herbicides, 34 per cent to Group 2 herbicides and 27 per cent are resistant to both.

Those numbers are growing. The producer organization points to “drastic increases” in HWRO in Alberta since a Western Canada-wide survey in 2000.

Make the switch to TKW

There are several tasks producers should perform prior, during and after the crop season when dealing with HRWO. Micklich pointed to examples such as scouting for post-spray efficacy, identifying cross-resistance, seed sampling and reaching out to dealers for resistance testing if necessary.

One of the most important things producers can do to fight HRWO is increase seeding rates. However, some may have to make an adjustment in how they measure seed.

For producers who haven’t made the switch from bushels or pounds per acre to 1,000 kernel weight (TKW, sometimes known as total seed weight or TSW), or the weight of 1,000 seeds, this will be the time to do so.

In 2019, Harry Brook, agrologist with Alberta Agriculture, told Alberta Farmer Express why TKW is a more precise gauge of seed size measurement.

“Where there is significant variation in seed size between one variety and another, bushels per acre is a poor seeding tool to use,” he said.

“With peas, for example, there can be as much as 75 per cent seed size variation. That can have a big impact on plants per square foot.”

Added Micklich, “when you’re just doing a two bushel an acre measurement, that’s a volumetric measurement. It’s just not that accurate anymore.”

“What we want to do is use 1,000 kernel weight and calculate it off of what your target plant per square foot is, because if you just use bushels off of seed weight, your rate will sway. It can sway up to 20, 30 per cent just based off of seed weight if you’re just doing 120 pounds an acre and that’s it.”

Add early maturing crops to rotation

Adding early maturing crops such as peas and winter wheat to a rotation is likely the most important tool growers can use prevent reoccurring wild oat growth, said Micklich. The idea is to kick wild oats out of the seed bank before they’re physically mature, decreasing their survivability drastically.

“So if we can knock it off the plant in mid-August where it’s not quite mature … you reduce the survivability of that seed over winter.”

Taking preventative measures against wild oats early – particularly with late-harvested crops like wheat and canola — makes sense because there aren’t many control options once the oats establish.

“That (wild oat) seed will reach maturity before we get to it and (the seeds) will drop. So you’re just replenishing that seed bank. I wouldn’t say you’re starting from square one, but you’re just not eliminating that seed,” noted Miklich.

“A lot of times in east-central Alberta, by the time we harvest canola, it’s getting close to freezing. Most guys aren’t going to be doing a post-harvest spray. So you just get yourself in a weird spot where there’s nothing you can do to try and reduce that seed bank until the spring.”

Herbicide layering now a must-do

With so much herbicide resistance already a part of wild oats, producers don’t have much choice but to layer herbicides to control the weed, said Miklich.

“This is mandatory — you’re just getting ahead of it by initiating this.

“The concept of it is we’re trying to use different groups or modes of action sequentially throughout the growing season.

“The basis of it is you do a fall apply in say Group 15; a pre-burn, say, in a Group 2 or Group 15, and then an in-crop, say, in a Group 1 … Whatever group you would have the most efficacy with.”

Minimize tillage

There are several reasons to minimize tillage, but in the case of wild oats a big one is preventing the incorporation of wild oat seed underground where it can remain dormant for years, in the process increasing their life spans.

“When guys are high-speed discing their wild oat patches. that is one of the worst things we can do for it because you are burying that seed and it will sit in dormancy.”

What growers need to do, offered Micklich, is induce germination of the wild oats.

“So say, in a pea crop, if you’ve had that stubble sitting for a month in the sun, a lot of those wild oats will be germinated. Either the frost will get it or it will give us a point of attack to eliminate those seeds: a germinated seed that you can kill or do something with is one less seed in that seed bank.”

The post Think beyond the herbicide jug when dealing with wild oats appeared first on Grainews.

Versatile has introduced four new widths — a 15-foot, 18-foot, 21-foot and 24-foot — to its high-speed disc lineup for model year 2026.

One of the new units, the HS150, was on display at Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show 2025 in Woodstock, Ontario.

“What sets us apart is the tilt angle on the Fury HS,” said Leo Reznik, product manager with Versatile. “It has 20 degrees tilt angle, and in combination with the disk angle, creates more disturbance on the soil.”

Reznik added that the new design allows the Fury HS series to chop crop residue better and bury it more into the soil than its competitors.

The disc sizes are 22 and 24-inch on the new HS series of high-speed discs. Reznik said that the combination of disc size and disc orientation creates a very smooth seedbed.

Alongside the HS series, Versatile has also released the Fury R which has a 10-degree tilt angle and is comparable to other high-speed discs.

Reznik said that the Fury is one of the heaviest implements in its class, delivering a down-force of about 1,000 pounds per foot.

“This creates a situation that we don’t need to use a hydraulic pressure on the wings,” said Reznik. “The weight of the implement is enough to keep it engaged with the soil.”

Reznik added that the transport width is about three metres.

Versatile is accepting customer orders for the new Fury models now and will begin manufacturing the units in October 2025.

The Fury is designed and made at Versatile’s manufacturing facility in Winnipeg, Man.

See more Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show coverage on Farmtario’s landing page.

The post Versatile brings updated Fury line of high-speed discs to Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show appeared first on Grainews.

The French manufacturer’s new 5640s have a redesigned frame that “optimizes” weight and strength, allowing them to perform better in wet field conditions. Hydraulic positive stop depth control is now standard. It allows the operator to adjust the depth of each section independently.

The 5640 cultivators keep Kuhn’s floating hitch design, which lifts the gauge wheels off the ground during road transport, eliminating castor wobble at road speeds. The frame now has a narrower transport width as well.

There is a choice of spring or K-Tine mounts fitted with either edge-on or flat shanks. There are six different configurations of levelling attachments, including a new anti-tangle, five-row spike tooth harrow and a new optional hydraulic reel lift. The company claims these levelling attachments can easily handle both heavy residue and wet conditions.

Kuhn has added two wider working widths at the top end of the 5640 line, 56- and 60-foot models. In all, the 5640 models are available in 20.5- to 60.5-foot working widths.

The post Kuhn introduces the 5640 field cultivator appeared first on Grainews.

Since then, the system has seen a few changes.

“We’ve taken that system and converted it to look at it as an autonomy platform,” says Dinen Subramaniam, product launch manager for Outrun at PTx Trimble.

“So instead of a tillage and grain cart product, we’re really thinking about it as you buy one Outrun intelligent system and then you extend it for different tasks.”

The company expects to expand its use to other field operations in the future.

At this stage, Outrun is still focused on applications using John Deere 8R tractors, and is available in limited release for pulling a grain cart in the field this year.

In August, the company expects to announce limited release of the tillage application with both uses expanding to work with Fendt 900 Series tractors as well as the Deeres.

“The tillage system and the offering for the Fendt 900 series, we’ll start beginning (at the Farm Progress Show in Illinois in late August) for customer use in 2026,” says Subramaniam.

“Right now, our support is for the John Deere 8R with IVTs. We may also catch the 1000 Series (Fendt) tractors next year, but that’s up in the air.”

There have been technical changes to Outrun as a result of a year’s worth of field trials. It now uses the Nav 900 GPS and RTK system from PTx Trimble. The vehicle-to-vehicle communications system has also changed.

“Previously, the two systems communicated over an independent radio system,” he says.

“We’re now communicating over Starlink. So the two are connected, but farmers can also log in and see how things are going.”

When Outrun was first shown to the media last year, Agco executives said they expected to sell the system to farmers on a subscription basis with costs dependent on how many hours or acres each subscriber used it for.

However, Subramaniam now says the company has rethought that and decided to go with a more conventional subscription model with a fixed per-year fee.

“We had a usage-based model previously, but we’ve shifted our plan to a more traditional model as of this spring.

“Right now, the the hardware components will be a one-time cost, somewhere in the range of $50,000 to $60,000. Then an annual service cost of $15,000 per year. That includes correction for the receivers, satellite connection through Starlink, AI compute costs, cloud costs and everything else. There are no additional costs.”

The development of Outrun can trace its engineering origins to 2013, when some of the basic technologies were initially developed. Since then, those systems have been refined and improved. Dedicated work on the Outrun project began in 2018.

“All of that technology has come along to the point in 2018 when we started specifically working on the system,” says Subramaniam.

“We were building on top of the 90 per cent of the iceberg you don’t really see.

“It really is a relatively long story of development and team building, lessons learned, all to the point of getting this product out in a mature capacity.”

As a recognition of the engineering team’s achievement in creating the system, Outrun has garnered a few engineering awards over the past year, starting with an AE50 award from the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers in the U.S.

“We were selected for the Davidson Award out of that, and there were only three honourees,” he adds.

“And recently we were selected for the Fast Company World Changing Ideas award as well.”

While many farmers may not be aware of the significance of an engineering team raking in awards like that, Subramaniam says is makes a big difference to the people working on the project.

“It is really important. It’s a tough problem we’re tackling. From a morale point of view, it’s great for the team to be recognized that way. It’s important to recognize these awards are also focused on the story and potential, the difference (it makes) in communities and farmers’ lives around the world. I think that part is very gratifying as well.”

The post Refined autonomous Outrun grain cart ready for limited commercial release appeared first on Grainews.

While imports of other companies’ off-patent brands of glyphosate may buffer the immediate shock, the long-term implications could reshape weed management across the Prairies.

Hugh Beckie, a former Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada weed scientist, explored this very scenario in 2019. At the time, he was based at the University of Western Australia, so his modelling focused on Australian farming systems. But while the crops may differ, both Australia and Canada depend heavily on glyphosate-based weed control, making many of his findings relevant here.

Beckie’s work laid out not just the impacts of losing glyphosate, but the sweeping, system-wide changes farmers would need to adopt in its absence.

To understand what that shift might look like on the ground, Glacier FarmMedia spoke with Kim Brown, provincial weed extension specialist with Manitoba Agriculture, about the tools, trade-offs and decisions farmers may face if glyphosate were to disappear from the weed control toolbox.

Brown says Canadian farmers have already been working to reduce their reliance on glyphosate due to the rise of herbicide-resistant weeds.

“We’ve already been going down that road where glyphosate for certain weeds just has not been working,” Brown says.

“We’ve had to find alternative methods for weed control.”

That said, a full loss of glyphosate would escalate the challenge considerably, especially given that weed pressure is a constant in Prairie fields.

“There are weed seeds in the soil. The weed seed bank is vast,” she says.

“Every single year there will be weeds.”

That tracks with what Troy LaForge, who farms in the brown soil zone near Cadillac, Sask., about 65 km south of Swift Current, predicted when we asked him to consider what his fields would look like if glyphosate were to someday disappear from the market.

“What we would probably see is a progression in winter annual and perennial weeds, and from that perspective, we may have to change up to some different oilseeds where we can use actives like clopyralid (the Group 4 active in products such as Lontrel and Curtail) and some of the graminicides (Groups 1 and 2) that are more effective on perennial grasses like quackgrass and foxtail barley,” he says.

“We’d have to change to some different crops, and I honestly don’t know what those would be at this moment, but we may have to change because we just don’t have means of keeping weeds under control otherwise.”

Southwestern Saskatchewan is not generous with the rainfall and not typically canola country, but if glyphosate were to go away, “it might mean that we’ve got to start growing canola more continuously to use a product like glufosinate (the Group 10 active in Liberty) for example.”

Brown concurs there are other herbicide options, even in glyphosate-tolerant systems, thanks to stacked traits — but those alternatives likely won’t cover the same broad weed spectrum that glyphosate does.

“We will have alternatives,” she said.

“But it’s going to get a lot more complicated, and it’s definitely going to get more expensive.”

READ ALSO: Glyphosate class action moves forward in Canada

Farmers may also need to revisit herbicide products they aren’t currently using and some they haven’t used in years. Brown said some older chemistries may play a bigger role again, particularly in rotation or in tank mixes.

However, product availability, crop safety and regional fit will be key considerations.

“To me, as a no-tiller, the No. 1 issue is going to be what we replace it with, and at this point, the actives that are registered are going to increase our costs significantly,” LaForge says.

“And it’s probably going to mean that we’ve got to bring back some active ingredients that we haven’t had for a while and just have higher levels of toxicity at the end of the day.”

Losing glyphosate would also push integrated weed management (IWM) to the forefront.

“Those tools have always been there,” Brown says.

“In the past, we haven’t used those tools as effectively as we could. But we’re going to have to now because we won’t have a choice.”

Brown stresses the value of crop competition: adjusting seeding dates, seeding rates, row spacing and cultivar selection all help. But the biggest lever, she says, is crop rotation.

“Crop diversity is probably the single biggest thing we need to do when it comes to weed control.”

Life cycle diversity — mixing annuals and perennials, or at least spring and fall crops — can help break weed cycles and reduce reliance on any single product or practice.

Beckie’s paper indicates how Canadian farmers may have a leg up over their Australian counterparts when it comes to managing glyphosate resistance.

In Western Canada, about 40 per cent of canola acres are planted to herbicide-resistant varieties, but resistance hasn’t taken off the way it has in Australia. That’s largely thanks to the widespread use of glufosinate-tolerant cultivars and more diverse crop rotations.

Still, Beckie warns, losing glyphosate as a pre-harvest option would hit hard in pulse crops, where there are few good alternatives for controlling tough perennial weeds.

Harvest weed seed control (HWSC) is another tool Brown mentioned, and it also played a central role in Beckie’s post-glyphosate scenario. Originally developed in Australia — where herbicide resistance evolved faster and hit harder — HWSC focuses on capturing or destroying weed seeds at harvest to prevent them from replenishing the seed bank.

Beckie’s modelling leaned heavily on this strategy, especially in the absence of effective pre-harvest herbicides.

HWSC has also been gaining traction in Canada and could become more relevant as farmers look for non-chemical ways to keep weed populations in check.

“You want to destroy the weed seeds, or you want to move them, or take them off the field and not let them add to the weed seed bank,” Brown says.

Tillage remains an option, and Brown notes it’s something most farms already have the equipment to do — but bringing tillage back as a primary weed control tool comes with consequences.

Brown points out that glyphosate was instrumental in the widespread adoption of minimum- or zero-till systems, and that if it’s no longer available, it could set things back significantly.

“There’s going to be many negative consequences with that,” she says, “including soil degradation, increased greenhouse gases and even just fuel consumption.”

Hence at LaForge’s farm, for example, tillage is just not an option.

“If we have to go back to tillage in this part of the world, we (would) probably decrease our yields instantly by 30 to 40 per cent,” given the amount of soil moisture that would be lost in the process, he says.

The availability of glyphosate has increased the diversity and productivity of the farm’s rotations and “created a whole new level of soil conservation in this area.”

There’s some hope on the horizon.

Brown points to emerging technologies such as laser weeding, electrocution, steam weeding and the potential for new herbicides or non-traditional weed control products. Much of this innovation, she said, is being driven by the urgency of the current situation.

“There’s a lot of research being done because of the very situation that we’re in right now,” she says.

Extension specialists such as Brown will play a key role in helping farmers adjust. She said the core message around integrated weed management isn’t changing, but the urgency and scope of that message are growing.

“We’re just going to have to get a lot more educated on some of these products that are out there that we need to be using,” she says.

“We have to raise that level of comfort, because that will be new territory for many farmers.”

The post What would happen if Roundup disappeared? appeared first on Grainews.

The pesky tumbleweed, which has become difficult to control in parts of Western Canada, doesn’t like to be buried. Research has shown the seeds of kochia are less likely to germinate when they’re buried in the soil.

For the last few years, AAFC scientists in Saskatoon have been studying methods to “artificially” bury kochia seeds in the soil as a possible way to control the tumbleweed.

The idea is founded on the principle that kochia typically appears in patches within a field, rather than across the entire field.

“Only treat kochia where it is found,” Shaun Sharpe, an AAFC weed scientist, told the Saskatchewan Agronomy Research Update in December in Saskatoon.

“The idea with patch management … (is) if we can pick out where it is and manage it heavily … we can apply a mulch or something to bury it.”

As Sharpe noted in his presentation, kochia has developed resistance to multiple herbicides and become a pernicious weed in parts of the Prairies.

In Canada, there are confirmed cases of kochia being resistant to Group 2, Group 9 (glyphosate), Group 4 and Group 14 herbicides.

Kochia’s resistance to herbicides is likely to get worse, so growers need alternative solutions to keep it in check.

Patches of kochia typically occur in areas near sloughs or in the marginal parts of the field.

“Wind is a major driver. Anywhere a tumbleweed can get caught… you may have a path where a tumbleweed travelled and get growth (of kochia) there. But rarely do I see a whole field infestation.”

A combine can also spread kochia seeds as it moves across the field.

Sharpe’s idea of “burying” kochia seed comes from a study done around 2005. Rene Van Acker, a former University of Manitoba weed scientist who’s now the interim president of the University of Guelph, was part of a project that looked at kochia seeds and germination.

“In growth room studies, kochia seed placed at the soil surface had greater emergence compared with seed burial to a 10-millimetre or greater depth,” the abstract for the study reports.

“Burying seed will greatly reduce future kochia populations.”

Previous studies have already established tillage is an effective way to bury kochia seed and control the weed. However, Sharpe wanted to study other methods because “we don’t want to go backwards” on tilling cropland.

“We’re in an environment where we don’t want to use tillage (because of) soil conservation,” Sharpe says.

From 2021 to 2023, Sharpe partnered with six farmers around Last Mountain Lake north of Regina for a real-world experiment.

At those six sites, AAFC scientists applied a layer of different materials to a patch of kochia, including black plastic; chaff; and hydro-mulch, a slurry of seeds, mulch and fibre that’s used in erosion control.

The researchers also mowed patches of kochia.

They did the experiment over three years and tracked the effectiveness of the different treatments.

The plastic mulch performed the best, providing 100 per cent control. However, spreading a layer of plastic on cropland isn’t a great idea.

However, the chaff was also effective. The level of control was 44-95 per cent, with higher levels in the first year of the study.

“The chaff treatment … we used whatever was in the field. We tried to get it six centimetres in depth,” Sharpe said.

“I’m very excited about this because chaff and straw is something that every farmer is going to have.”

Mowing was also effective — it controlled 50-95 per cent of the kochia population in the patch. However, it did require three to five cuttings per growing season.

The hydro-mulch was less effective.

Following his presentation, an audience member asked Sharpe about the risks associated with placing a layer of chaff on a patch of kochia. Wouldn’t that transport other weed seeds to the patch?

“Yes…. All the weeds in your field prior to harvest are coming out in the chaff,” he said.

“(But) if we’re going to seed a (weed) that’s not kochia, that’s OK with me too, just because you’re going to have additional competition in those patches.”

Sharpe’s research on “artificial” burial of kochia seeds is not yet published. At this writing he’s editing the paper and expected to submit it for publication early this year.

The post Get your kochia under control — by burying it appeared first on Grainews.

“It means more products; it means a lot more management,” Manitoba Agriculture weed extension specialist Kim Brown says. “Realistically, the sooner we get out in front of this, the better.”

Kochia is a fast-spreading tumbleweed that has become a major problem for farmers in the plains regions on both sides of the border. It thrives in dry conditions, emerges early in the season and produces large numbers of seeds.

Group 14 herbicides, such as Authority, Heat and Valtera, target the protoporphyrinogen oxidase (PPO) enzyme and cause rapid desiccation by disrupting a plant’s chlorophyll production.

Dose-response study

Group 14 resistance in kochia is a recent development. It was first discovered on a farm near Kindersley, Sask. in 2021. The following year, it was independently discovered at two different locations in North Dakota. At that point, researchers at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada began working with researchers from North Dakota State University to develop a cross-border dose-response study, which released its results in March this year.

Researchers tested kochia from Saskatchewan and North Dakota, including herbicide-resistant and susceptible plants, under controlled greenhouse conditions. They sprayed them with two Group 14 herbicides at various doses to see how well they worked.

The study confirmed what everyone suspected: those kochia populations were highly resistant to the Group 14 herbicides tested (saflufenacil and carfentrazone). In Saskatchewan, resistant plants from Kindersley had 57- to 87-fold resistance, meaning they needed 57 to 87 times more saflufenacil to get the same effect as normal susceptible plants.

The same pattern held with carfentrazone. Kindersley plants needed up to 120 times the normal dose for similar control. In North Dakota, even the highest herbicide rates weren’t enough — 50 to 76 per cent of plants still survived.

How resistance spreads

Charles Geddes, an AAFC research scientist and lead researcher on the dose-response study, says that so far in Canada, group 14-resistant kochia has only been confirmed in two fields: the original one in Saskatchewan and another in Alberta, confirmed in 2023.

But based on preliminary data from the latest Prairie-wide kochia survey, which began last fall, he suspects the issue is now present in multiple fields in Saskatchewan. And given how quickly glyphosate resistance spread in kochia, he expects it will soon be confirmed in other regions as well.

“We suspect, just given the history, that this type of resistance will likely spread quickly as well,” Geddes says.

Geddes, who works out of AAFC’s Lethbridge research centre, says they’ve done some yet-to-be-published research into the mechanisms behind how the resistance spreads.

Resistance in kochia can show up in more than one way, he says. Sometimes, it evolves independently — a random mutation in a single plant lets it survive a herbicide spray. If that plant sets seed and similar products keep getting used, resistant plants gradually take over.

But resistance doesn’t just develop on its own. It can also spread from field to field. Kochia is a tumbleweed, so when mature plants break off and roll across the landscape, they scatter seeds — including those carrying resistance traits. On top of that, kochia can cross-pollinate with other plants. A resistant plant flowering near a susceptible one can pass resistance through pollen.

That’s why Geddes says farmers across the Prairies could soon see Group 14-resistant kochia in their fields.

“Farmers should keep an eye out for it when they’re scouting,” Geddes warns. “If they notice a lack of control, I would encourage them to collect a sample and get it tested for resistance so they know what they’re dealing with.”

The problem for no-till operations

Researchers did dose-response work on both soil-applied and foliar-applied Group 14s. While Geddes points out that the resistance is stronger for foliar-applied, it’s still present for the soil-applied. And that is why it’s a big concern for no-till operations across the prairies.

Geddes explains that no-till and min-till growers have relied heavily on glyphosate as a preemergent burn-down product for kochia. With kochia quickly developing resistance to glyphosate, the strategy became to add in another mode of action. Often, those products were Group 14s.

“Pre-plant burndown herbicide options become limited when glyphosate resistance and Group 14 resistance are present in a kochia population,” Geddes says. “Since tillage is effective for kochia management, one concern could be a reversion to more tillage-intensive systems in areas that have made a lot of progress with no-till.”

In fact, one reason Geddes says Manitoba, sandwiched between Saskatchewan and North Dakota, has yet to discover Group 14 resistance in kochia is that farms in the province rely less on no-till strategies, particularly in the Red River Valley.

“Tillage actually works quite well against kochia, because it can’t emerge from very deep in the seed bank, but it still germinates,” Geddes says. “So if it germinates when it’s buried, then the seed just doesn’t survive.”

But Brown says Manitoba farmers shouldn’t assume they’re in the clear. In fact, she fully suspects the resistance is already in Manitoba—it just hasn’t been confirmed yet.

“We use tillage a lot less than some places in Saskatchewan, so we are less reliant on some pre-emerge herbicides. But we do use those products, and we have a lot of kochia,” notes Brown. “I would be very shocked if we didn’t have any here.”

Integrated weed management

Since the discovery of kochia’s Group 14 resistance, Brown says, she’s been working hard to raise awareness of the issue. And when she’s asked when the issue will become serious enough for farmers make changes to their weed management strategies, she says waiting isn’t an option; regardless of which province they’re in. It’s the same story with any herbicide-resistance issue.

“You need to assume it’s here now,” she says. “We needed to start changing things years ago.”

Brown says farmers can still use Group 14 products but will need to start adding different groups, stop relying heavily on groups where resistance is growing and start thinking about integrated weed management strategies.

“We need to make changes before it becomes a problem,” she says. “If we do everything we can to reduce weeds, not through the spray tank, but through everything else, we can get cleaner, less weedy fields and have less to spray.”

Some cultural control options the Manitoba Agriculture website lists for kochia include delayed seeding, or pre-seeding tillage because kochia germinates early in the season. It also suggests rotating between early- and late-seeded crops, or switching up seeding dates year to year to keep populations in check. Since most kochia seeds don’t last more than a year, even stopping seed set for a single season can make a real difference. Cutting for feed or mowing can be effective too, as long as it’s done before the plant goes to seed.

With no new herbicide modes of action on the horizon, Brown says it’s important to extend the effectiveness of the ones that are still available — and the way to do that is to use them less.

“If we start doing all those things, it’ll help these herbicides last longer.” she says.

If those sprayless strategies do involve incorporating tillage, Brown emphasizes it must be strategic and appropriate tillage, acknowledging there are negative consequences for tillage — but if used properly, it’s a very effective tool.

“We need to use it in the right place at the right time,” Brown says. “Even in the drier areas, where they’ve been full-blown no-till or minimum till, there are times when tillage is the right tool.”

Looking ahead

Geddes says researchers are now working on a quick genetic test that would allow farmers to submit leaf tissue samples to find out whether the resistance trait is present in their kochia populations.

His team is also studying cross-resistance to see which other Group 14 herbicides are affected. The next step, says Geddes, is finding alternatives.

“We’re figuring out what alternative management practices can be used when it comes to managing kochia — and specifically at that pre-plant window, where these Group 14 products are used most,” he says.

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Among those were the acquisitions of two implement manufacturers: Norway-based Kverneland, in 2012, and Great Plains, based at Salina, Kansas, in 2016.

Tillage implements figure prominently among the products those shortline brands are known for.

When Kubota announced the purchase of Great Plains, Kubota USA’s senior vice-president of sales, marketing and product support, Todd Stucke said, “We intend to respect the distinctiveness of the brands, trademarks and operational strengths. Doing so will allow employees, dealers and customers to do business with the same great companies they have come to know and trust.”

More than a decade after that Great Plains deal, the decision to retain both individual shortline implement names remains Kubota’s long-term intention.

“Great Plains was integrated into Kubota in 2016,” says field product specialist Chris Ennis. “But Great Plains has been a longstanding solid name in the ag industry since 1976. The decision was made it will stay as Great Plains. Kverneland in Europe is going to remain Kverneland.

A few implements have been integrated into the Kubota brand lineup, though, such as its Kverneland-designed round balers.

“Some of our high-speed discs, our CD Series, they will be branded Kubota orange, and some of our planters,” Ennis adds. “But that’s more on the Kverneland side. Everything manufactured by Great Plains in Salina, Kansas, will remain Great Plains green.”

The Kubota-branded CD high-speed compact discs are available in up to 23-foot working widths. The company will also offer chisel cultivators up to 16 feet with the Kubota brand, along with ploughs. The remainder of the brand’s tillage offerings include Kverneland packers and ploughs, along with the full line of Great Plains implements.

“It’s very individual field-based solutions we try to offer,” Ennis says. “We want to sell equipment based on agronomy, because when it does a good job we all look good. We have the equipment to do it. It’s just a matter of picking the right piece.

“This is our 50-year anniversary for Kubota Canada. Within that 50 years, we’ve come a long, long way on the tillage side.” — S.G.

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“I’m not going to say that herbicides don’t work because there are quite a few herbicide options still to manage volunteer canola,” says Charles Geddes, a research scientist for Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada at Lethbridge. “But when we talk about weed management, it’s really all about integrating those herbicide programs with other cultural factors.” 

Geddes speaks from experience: he currently leads the AAFC Weed Ecology and Cropping Systems Research program, which monitors herbicide-resistant weeds across the Prairies. And in the early 2010s, his PhD work at the University of Manitoba was specifically focused on controlling volunteer canola in soybeans. 

Volunteer canola was a big issue at the time — especially in Manitoba, where soybean acres were on the rise because short-season cultivars had emerged that could thrive in the province. The challenge arose because these new soybean varieties, like canola, were genetically modified to be resistant to the same herbicides. 

“Farmers who had already been growing canola were starting to adopt soybeans, and volunteer canola was coming back as a difficult-to-control weed in those soybean crops,” Geddes says. 

As a result, a lot of emphasis was placed on developing strategies to manage the problem — and one of the strategies Geddes looked at was targeting the seed bank. 

“The easiest way to do that is through some form of physical disturbance, whether it’s tillage or harrowing,” he says. 

Anyone who grows canola knows there will be a certain amount of seed loss. Whether it’s seed being lost ahead of the combine, at the header, or being blown out of the back of the combine because of the way the combine is set, some seed loss is to be expected. 

Geddes notes surveys on the Prairies revealed seed losses of up to 5,000 seeds per square metre. Canola seeds have a unique ability to enter ‘secondary dormancy’ under the right conditions, such as warmer temperatures and dry soil. This dormancy allows the seeds to persist longer in the soil seed bank. 

“We can typically see volunteer canola sticking around for at least two to three years,” he says. 

Fall harrowing 

So, beginning in 2013, Geddes, along with his research partner and study co-author Rob Gulden, set up research plots across southern Manitoba, at Carman, Howden and Melita, to test the effectiveness of soil disturbance on the volunteer canola seed bank. 

They studied how both the timing and type of soil disturbance impacted the seed bank. In terms of soil disturbance, they looked at harrowing and tandem disc compared to a zero-till control. In terms of timing, they ran the two soil disturbance methods immediately following harvest, one month after harvest, and the following year, just before spring seeding. 

“What we found was that if you can disturb that soil as soon after canola harvest as possible, it goes a long way to helping to deplete the seed bank going into the next growing season,” Geddes says. 

The research found early soil disturbance enhanced seed-to-soil contact for seeds lost during harvest. With sufficient moisture, the seeds germinated, and winterkill did the rest. The results were a little less pronounced a month after harvest, and negligible pre-seeding. 

The type of soil disturbance didn’t seem to matter. Both methods performed equally well compared with the no-till control.

READ MORE: How to keep last year’s canola out of your beans

“What that means is that even if we’re in more of a no-till or a min-till environment, we can get away with a bit of a lighter disturbance,” said Geddes. “It’s just enough to promote that seed-to-soil contact in the fall.” 

Published in 2017, Geddes’ work was one of the earlier studies to look down these paths for control of volunteer canola in soybeans — but its findings still stand today as farmers continue to grapple with volunteers. 

The changing face of volunteer management 

For the past 20 years, volunteer canola has risen in the rankings of problem weeds. Geddes says recent surveys have placed volunteer canola in the top two or three most abundant weeds in the Prairie provinces. 

“It’s different than some of the other herbicide-resistant weeds because volunteer canola resistance was actually purposefully selected through genetic modification,” he says. And while those genetics have improved weed management in canola production, because its seeds can persist in the soil for so long, they tend to come back to haunt farmers. 

Crop rotation and sequencing 

As a result, Geddes says crop rotation has become a critical tool in volunteer canola management. 

“If we’re growing tight crop rotations that are only two to three years in length, it’s not a surprise that voluntary canola will be one of the more abundant weeds to manage,” he says. “So having enough of those crops between canola rotations to manage those volunteer canola populations is quite important.” 

As mentioned, few, if any, farmers think chemistry alone will help them control volunteer canola. 

“With a herbicide-only program, combined with short or non-diverse rotations, it’s pretty difficult to keep the issue under control,” Geddes says. “If they are practicing tight rotations, they quickly learn that the issue can show up, and you really do need those break crops in there to manage it effectively.” 

The order in which to plant rotations is also important. For example, with voluntary canola being particularly difficult to manage in soybeans, it would make sense to put a cereal between canola and soybean crops, so you have at least a one-year break. 

“Those volunteers will be reduced going into your soybean crop already, because you’ve had enough time since your last canola crop.” 

Crowd it out 

Because canola was bred to be a relatively competitive crop, voluntary canola acts as a relatively competitive weed. So, in terms of cultural weed management, it makes the most sense to apply those strategies early in the growing season. 

“It does get up and out of the ground quickly,” Geddes says. “So it’s really that early season they want to target to get as competitive a crop as early as possible.” 

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