Research HighlightsFind Effective Weed Control, Compare Costs
In this article, you’ll find details on:
- Two online tools help soybean farmers find herbicide options to effectively manage problem weeds and compare program costs.
- Online tools provide greater flexibility to assess the profitability of different herbicide tolerance trait packages.
- The tools have been made open source to allow other areas to use or customize the tools for their farmers.
By Laura Temple
Many factors weigh heavily in soybean weed control decisions:
- Effectiveness on problem weeds in each field
- Cost per acre
- Short- and long-term weed resistance management
- Herbicide tolerance packages bred into soybean varieties
- Application timing, including burndown, pre-emergence and post-emergence
“Farmers have many different herbicide options,” says Alan Leslie, center director with the Maryland Agricultural Experiment Station for the University of Maryland. “Recently, many have been forced to change programs due to drastic developments like new resistant weeds or unavailability of standard herbicides due to global supply change issues.”
Farmers can access an abundance of herbicide research information, but it may be tough to sort through it. Product labels share tons of information, like specific weeds controlled. However, companies are required to share many other details, often making labels complicated to digest and compare.
University extension efficacy trials provide unbiased regional and local data about how well different herbicides control specific weeds. That data, often shared in agronomy guides, can be overwhelming — especially when trying to compare programs.
“To simplify research for farmers, I wanted to develop a web-based tool that would help them compare and tailor soybean herbicide programs based on effectiveness against problem weeds,” Leslie says.
The Maryland Soybean Board funded his effort to make herbicide research more accessible.
Filtering by Control Efficacy
Leslie designed the Soybean Pesticide Selection Tool to allow farmers to select any number of problem weeds in a field. The online tool then filters efficacy tables from the Penn State Agronomy Guide, created from university extension trials, to narrow down herbicide choices based on those that perform best on the targeted weeds.
The tool shows efficacy ratings for the herbicides that control the selected weeds in separate tabs for burndown, pre-emergence and post-emergence products.
“This allows farmers to compare the effectiveness of different programs side-by-side,” Leslie says.
The herbicides in the filtered tables populate drop-down menus that allow farmers to select one or more products for each herbicide timing, as well as add rate and cost information. Farmers can save their information by generating a report, which includes information about active ingredients, herbicide group number and required adjuvants and tank additives. This information aids resistance management and budgeting as farmers plan for weed control.
“That report is only saved locally, so users aren’t sharing data with anyone else,” he adds. “But it condenses the most pertinent information into a format that is simpler to navigate, read and understand.”
Comparing Total Input Costs
Leslie designed this tool as a companion to the Soybean Budget Tool, launched for the 2021 growing season. This online tool was also funded by the Maryland Soybean Board.
“We had been using spreadsheets to create a budget tool, but they are fairly rigid,” he says. “As more soybean herbicide packages became available, each system basically needed its own budget spreadsheet.”
Leslie created a more flexible tool that lives online and allows changes for inputs and crop prices. It includes all the functions of previous spreadsheet-based tools, but with many more choices, especially for pest control.
Because herbicides had the most options and required the largest section of this tool, creation of the Soybean Pesticide Selection Tool was his logical next step. Together, the tools help farmers and others better manage soybean production.
“For example, our weed scientist uses this tool to calculate the cost of tankmixes in his weed control trials,” Leslie says.
Designing Tools to Share and Adapt
Leslie used development of both these online tools to help him better understand the economics and business side of soybean production, valuable perspective now that he serves as director of university research centers.
He intentionally built both tools using a readily available platform. He published files containing programming codes and supporting data under a General Public Use license.
“Everything is completely open source, so that other states or regions can access and use the information,” Leslie explains.
The tools can be used as he created them or modified with appropriate regional and local data to support farmers as they find effective weed control options and compare program costs.
Additional Resources:
- Soybean Pesticide Selection Tool
- Soybean Budget Tool
- Introduction to Weed Scouting – YouTube video
- Weeds – GROW page
- Developing an Interactive Web App for Calculating Soybean Crop Budgets – National Soybean Checkoff Research Database
- Meet the Principal Investigator on this project: Alan Leslie
Published: Jan 13, 2025
The materials on SRIN were funded with checkoff dollars from United Soybean Board and the North Central Soybean Research Program. To find checkoff funded research related to this research highlight or to see other checkoff research projects, please visit the National Soybean Checkoff Research Database.
