AHRI Snapshots

In this episode of AHRI Snapshots, we catch up with an international guest. Dr Juan Vorster is an Associate Professor in Plant and Soil Sciences from the University of Pretoria, South Africa. Juan is studying herbicide resistance mechanisms in weeds and the development of effective management strategies for these weeds. He’s currently in Perth for a conference, so it’s a great opportunity to have...

In this AHRI Snapshots, we catch up with Principal Research fellow, Dr Qin Yu about her latest paper on glyphosate resistance in goosegrass.  This paper was published in Nature Communications in August 2023, which is an impressive achievement.  This paper is complicated, but essentially the researchers have found a hot spot on the genome of goosegrass that is a herbicide resistance generator. In t...

Over the last few years, the AHRI agronomy team has done extensive work looking at crop competition in hybrid and open-pollinated canola. Project lead, Dr Mike Ashworth, joins us on this podcast to discuss the findings on ideal seeding rate, variety, row spacing and seed size. Herbicides are currently working quite well in canola. We know that herbicide resistance is a real threat though, so we di...

In this episode, we catch up with visiting Associate Professor Todd Gaines. Todd is from Colorado State University and is currently working from UWA with AHRI.   In September, he’ll be at the International Plant and Animal Genome Australia conference in Perth city, where he’s organising a two-hour session of invited talks.  Todd is also organising a subsequent workshop at UWA on September 22nd, wh...

Blue lupins are notorious for being difficult to control and plants produce prolific seed banks.   Blue lupins are closely related to the domesticated narrow-leaf lupin, also known as the white lupin, so whichever herbicide is survived by white lupins is also survived by blue lupins. This is problematic as they look alike.  This is where a team of researchers from AHRI and the Centre for Applied B...

In this interview we chat with AHRI Research Officer Roberto Lujan Rocha about the survey work he has conducted on the quality of water sourced on farm for spray application.  This project is a collaboration between University of Western Australia, AHRI and the Centre for Water & Spatial Science.  The team looked at water from bores, dams, desalinated water, rainwater tanks and scheme water.  ...

As reliance on pre-emergent herbicides for both broadleaf and grass species is increasing, it’s essential to understand the dynamics of weed-herbicide interactions in the field.  Dr Mahima Krishnan and her colleagues from University of Adelaide are in the process of studying populations of summer weeds to help predict and then mitigate any future resistance that maybe develop by implementing appro...

On this episode of AHRI Snapshots, we’re catching up with former AHRI master’s student Geide Figueiredo (also known as JD) who worked alongside AHRI researcher Roberto Busi to try and break the herbicide cinmethylin, commercially known as Luximax.  Fortunately, they weren't able to break it, which is  great news for farmers and agronomists because it means that this herbicide is still working...

In this interview, AHRI's Jessica Strauss chats with Dr Aimone Porri, who is the Laboratory Head for Herbicide Target and Weed Resistance Research at BASF, based in Germany. Aimone's work spans across several fields in the weeds resistance research space, including working as a Geneticist, Molecular Biologist, and Plant Biologist. At the time of this chat, he was  in Australia visiting A...

In our first episode back for AHRI Snapshots this year, we chat with Dr Hira Shaukat, who previously was an AHRI PhD candidate.  Hira worked on 3D mapping of soil moisture throughout her PhD. Part of her work involved looking at how farmers could utilise degraded land affected by salinity. This involved figuring out what soil conditions would be suit the plant Leptospermum nitens. Nectar from this...

This month on the podcast, we’re going to be finding out about the upcoming Herbicide Discovery and Development Conference , which is happening from January 18 to 20, 2023 at Curtin University. Due to genetic resistance to many of the most used herbicides, the need for new ones is greater than ever. This conference invites you to be part of the solution! University of Mississippi Adjunct Research...

On AHRI Snapshots this month, we have an exciting episode, as we catch up with AHRI’s incoming Director, Associate Professor Ken Flower.  Ken would be familiar to listeners as he’s been involved in AHRI projects for several years, contributing his substantial knowledge in no-till and agronomy to the AHRI Agronomy team. He has a broad farming systems skillset, including in conservation farming and...

Don't stop thinking about tomorrow is the theme of the upcoming Crop Protection Forum in Wagga Wagga next month. In this AHRI Snapshots, we catch up with event organiser,  Dr Lizzy Lowe, who is the Senior Extension Scientist for Cesar Australia .  This event is held annually, with this year’s partners being The Centre of Crop Disease Management (CCDM) , the Australian Herbicide Resistance Ini...

In this AHRI Snapshots we catch up with Dr Martin Vila-Aiub, who was co-author on a recent publication that our latest AHRI insight covers .  It’s all about how highly glyphosate resistant plants can’t compete. AHRI researchers recently teamed up with Martin, who is based in Argentina and other researchers from Brazil to investigate the combination of crop competition and glyphosate on glyphosate-...

AHRI’s Dr Roberto Busi talks about his finding of velocity resistant wild radish in this podcast.  It’s not great news for growers – but knowledge is power.  At the end of 2019, Roberto Busi started a new herbicide resistance testing service based at UWA . Growers and agronomists sent in about 500 samples of ryegrass for testing as well as 121 samples of wild radish. Two of these wild radish popul...

In this episode, we're catching up with former AHRI PhD candidate, Nooshin Shahbazi, who is officially now a doctor, after her successful PhD completion.    Nooshin’s thesis is entitled “Use of Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) to detect and map weeds that grow taller than crops at harvest”.  We’re hear from Nooshin on her thesis findings and what the future might hold for LiDAR in weed det...

AHRI's Dr Mechelle Owen has been collating data from the 2020 random resistance survey. This is part of a national project, with investment from GRDC. Mechelle has been conducting these random surveys for a number of years and so she shares some of the trends in this interview she has identified from the 2015 survey results compared to these latest preliminary results from Western Australia. ...

On this edition of AHRI Snapshots, we catch up with Professor Hugh Beckie, for the final time! Hugh is retiring from the role of AHRI Director at the end of this month.  Hugh has has worked in the field of herbicide resistance for more than 30 years and has been leading AHRI research as Director since 2018 after moving to Australia from his home country of Canada. In this episode, we look back on...

In this episode of AHRI Snapshots, we’re catching up with AHRI’s Dr Danica Goggin about her latest paper which looks at cinmethylin metabolism in annual ryegrass.  Cinmethylin is a relatively new pre-emergent herbicide to Australian cereal cropping farming systems. While there hasn’t been any confirmed resistance of annual ryegrass to cinmethylin, there has been some populations which have had red...

In this interview, we catch up with AHRI Senior Agronomy Researcher, Roberto Lujan Rocha to talk about his latest publication he worked on with Aniruddha Maity, who briefly worked at AHRI just before the pandemic. This study, entitled Concurrent evolution of seed dormancy and herbicide resistance in field populations of dominant weed species in Western Australian cropping systems , evaluates the i...

For the first time in Western Australia, annual ryegrass from a cropped paddock was found to be resistant to glyphosate and paraquat (among other modes of action). AHRI Senior Research Fellow Dr Roberto Busi joins us on the podcast today to give an overview of this finding as a pre-cursor to an upcoming WeedSmart webinar. In this webinar,  he will present the preliminary results he obtained in rec...

Glufosinate is an important and widely used non-selective herbicide active on a wide range of plant species.  Resistance evolution to glufosinate in weedy plant species, including the global weed Eleusine indica, commonly known as goosegrass, is underway.  At AHRI, Principal Research Fellow, Qin Yu and her team established the molecular basis of target-site glufosinate resistance in goosegrass.   ...

This is the last AHRI Snapshots for 2021! What a year it has been. In this episode we’re catching up with AHRI Director, Hugh Beckie to go over the highlights from AHRI this year. We’ll also get an update on what the plans are for AHRI in 2022. This is now our 6th season of the podcast. Thank you for listening  this year and we look forward to bringing you more AHRI Snapshots in 2022! Top AHRI ins...

We've got exciting news! AHRI is getting a new website next week! AHRI Communications Officer, Jessica Scholle joins me on the podcast today to chat about this new development and we also give a broader communications update on AHRI. You might've noticed we've been getting to know our AHRI researchers better through videos. We talk about the strategy behind this. We also keep you in...

In this interview, we’re catching up with PhD candidate, Hira Shaukat. Hira’s first paper has just been published in the Agriculture Water Management Journal. It’s entitled “Quasi-3D mapping of soil moisture in agricultural fields using electrical conductivity sensing”.  The soil moisture measurement technique described in this paper has proven to be more efficient and accurate than other previous...