Attack of the Superweeds
Attack of the Superweeds
Tags: Agriculture, Gene drive syntheticH. C. Brown, New York Times, 2021.
If there’s a plant perfectly suited to outcompete the farmers, researchers and chemical companies that collectively define industrial American agriculture, it’s Palmer amaranth. This pigweed (a catchall term that includes some plants in the amaranth family) can re-root itself after being yanked from the ground. It can grow three inches a day. And it has evolved resistance to many of the most common weed killers, continuing to reproduce in what ought to be the worst of circumstances: A three-day-old, herbicide-injured seedling, for example, can expend its last bit of energy to produce seeds before it withers up and dies. Unchecked, Palmer amaranth can suppress soybean yields by nearly 80 percent and corn yields by about 90 percent. Nicolet was ultimately allowed to spray dicamba last summer because he purchased it before restrictions took effect. He used it this year too: The Trump administration issued new approvals for some formulations containing dicamba just a week before the presidential election. Still, Nicolet says the weed killer will eventually stop working on his land, another management tool rendered useless by the pigweed’s remarkable onslaught. Whether that day is 10 years in the future or three, he has no idea, but the Palmer amaranth continues to gain ground all the while. This summer, a handful of pigweeds sprouted in a field that had recently been sprayed. Nicolet couldn’t weed the 96 affected acres by hand, so he decided to let them grow. “It’s not really enough to hurt yield this year,” he said. “But you know, you have 100 weeds out there, the next year you’ll have a million.”
