Herbicide intensity depends on cropping system and weed control target: Unraveling the effects in field experiments

摘要

Herbicide use simplified cropping systems, which lead to short rotations and sowing dates rather focusing on yield than on weed management. Re-diversifying these cropping systems should reduce the vast use of herbicides. We hypothesize that herbicide use decreases with more diverse cropping systems even with few common crops. Cropping system experiments raise methodological questions connected with herbicide use. So far, herbicide use in field experiments is a-priori fixed and not adapted to changing situations. To overcome this, we developed a heuristic decision rule to employ herbicide intensities as response variable in statistical models.