2024 MSU Weeds Tour brings students, faculty and agriculture industry stakeholders together in the field
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EmailA huge crowd including stakeholders from all sectors including producers, industry and faculty, gathered at MSU Plant Pathology Farm to learn from each other about the latest developments in weed and seed research in the corn and soybean plots.
Erin Burns and Christy Sprague lead a small army of students, staff and faculty who worked for months preparing for the event—and it went off without a hitch. A new addition to this year’s tour is a weeds demonstration project in which graduate students Hannah Johnson and Ian Waldecker planted a full screen, with a big variety of crops typical for mid Michigan and treated each with common herbicides. The results go far beyond expression of resistance traits.
“We are doing this mostly to prepare for competition at the North Central Weed Science Collegiate Contest hosted by ABG Ag Services,” coming up at the end of July, Hannah said. But in creating the plot, Hanna said “we have learned so much more about crops that we normally don’t work on.”
Now at the midway point in their master’s degrees, these students are learning through participation in the entire agriculture process . “I love applied research,” said Hannah, who is studying Integrated Management of Volunteer Potatoes and Colorado Potato Beetle in Corn. “I also really enjoy outreach and extension – talking with producers.”
With sugarbeets as the main focus of his program, Ian said this is the largest of this type of project he’s been involved with. “It's been such a great program because I get to see more aspects of weed science and exposure to different kinds of projects.”
Recently, Hanna, Ian and others participated in the NCWSS conference to great success. Read more here.
