Recent weed management research in asparagus

摘要

The asparagus industry in California has experienced a substantial increase in new-planted acreage over the past four years. When all of the new asparagus reaches the full cutting season stage, statewide acreage will be approximately 35,000 acres. The current value of the crop is nearly 130 million dollar. Because asparagus is a limited acreage specialty perennial crop, it is difficult to get promising new herbicides registered. Most of the existing herbicide choices available to producers are relatively old with the exception of Solicam (norflurazon), as a preemergence choice on established asparagus, and Poast (sethoxydim) and Fusilade (fluazifop) for postemergence grass control use. Concerns about the eventual fate of older preemergence herbicides like Karmex (diuron) or Lorox (linuron), a preemergence/postemergence material, due to regulatory scrutiny, the Food Quality Protection Act (FQPA), and commitment by chemical manufacturers to maintain specialty crop registrations, require an effort by researchers and growers to convince companies to include asparagus (or other vegetable commodities) in their product development programs for registration of promising new herbicides. This becomes increasingly important for the control of perennial weed species like yellow nutsedge (Cyperus esculentus), field bindweed (Convolulus arvensis), bermudagrass (Cynodon dactylon), Johnsongrass (Sorghum halepense) and more recently introduced problems like velvetleaf (Abutilon theophrasti), hoary cress (Cardaria spp.) and perennial pepperweed (Lepidium latifolium).