Tracking weeds to stop them in their tracks

Recently, the weed Palmer amaranth has made its way to the Upper Midwest. One way it spreads is by contaminated livestock feed, which then contaminates manure and may inadvertently be spread onto the field. Prof. Melissa Wilson and her colleagues compared methods for recovering seeds from manure. “If farmers suspect that their livestock have been fed contaminated feed, we now have a simple and quick way to test the manure. This will allow them to make appropriate management decisions more rapidly,” said Wilson in an interview with agronomy.org. Read the full story or the recent publication in the Agricultural & Environmental Letters Journal.