Herbicide-resistant crops: A new tool in herbicide-resistant weed management

By the beginning of the next century there will be numerous herbicide-resistant varieties of most major crops. These will include varieties that are resistant to glyphosate, glufosinate, bromoxynil, sethoxydim, imidazolinones, and sulfonylureas, among others. These new herbicide-resistant varieties should be a powerful new tool for effective management of herbicide-resistant weed populations by increasing the number of herbicides a farmer can use in his weed management program. The availability of herbicide-resistant crop varieties will expand the number of different modes of action of herbicides available to the farmer,thus decreasing the selection pressure on the weed populations Not only will these new varieties decrease the selection of altered target site mutations, they will also permit herbicides that are detoxified via different metabolic pathways to be used in mixtures or rotations, thus decreasing the selection pressure for metabolic-based resistance. However, to reap the benefits of herbicide-resistant crops, these varieties have to be used as part of an integrated weed management program.