Integrated Crop Agronomy Cluster 2
Term: 4 years, beginning 2024
Status: Ongoing
Researcher(s): Kui Liu, Charles Geddes, AAFC
SaskCanola Investment: $150,000
Total Project Cost: $1,447,851
Funding Partners: ACPC, Alberta Grains, MCA, MCGA, MPSG, POGA, SPG, SWDC
Objective
Activity 6:
Objective 1: Develop a future, resilient cropping system in each of the major ecozones on the Canadian prairies and develop a “sustainability index” which integrates cropping system indicators such as crop productivity, resource use efficiency, weeds, diseases, soil health, whole-farm economics,
and environmental footprint.
Objective 2: Assess and improve soil health through integrated crop management practices.
Objective 3: Evaluate the benefit/cost and economic returns of major cropping systems on the Canadian Prairies.
Objective 4: Enhance soil carbon sequestration and reduce greenhouse gas emissions through improved agronomic management practices.
Activity 7:
Objective 1: Establish the Prairie Weed Monitoring Network (PWMN), a network of federal researchers, provincial specialists, and academics guiding weed biovigilance for the prairie region.
Objective 2: Complete the seventh set of weed abundance surveys in the prairie provinces since this series of provincial surveys began in the mid-1970s.
Objective 3: Complete the fifth set of pre-harvest herbicide-resistant weed surveys in the prairie provinces since this series of provincial resistance surveys began in the early-2000s.
Objective 4: Complete the third set of post-harvest herbicide-resistant kochia and Russian thistle surveys in the prairie provinces since this set of provincial surveys began in the early-2010s.
Objective 5: Complete a spatial risk assessment for the evolution of herbicide-resistant weeds in prairie cropping systems by integrating data from weed surveys, species-specific biology, cropping systems, and herbicide sales/use.
Objective 6: Develop tools to forecast weed community behaviour and range shifts in response to management factors and climate change.
Project Description
Activity 6: Recommendations of the best cropping systems in each ecozone will be made based on productivity, resource use efficiency, pest pressure, soil health, economic returns and environmental footprint. The integrated systems approach adopted in this project will help producer optimize their future production systems, which improve productivity and enhance the resilience of cropping systems to biotic and abiotic stress in a changing environment. A soil health index will be developed for industry to use. we develop and test different cropping systems with a goal of increasing producers’ net revenues. The detailed economic assessment will address the economic growth priorities. The potential soil carbon sequestration in different cropping systems will be quantified. The reduction of environmental footprint through improved agronomic management practices will be estimated using a modelling approach and verified by actual field measurements. Increasing soil carbon sequestration and reducing greenhouse gas emissions will directly address the priorities of reducing GHG emissions and sequestering carbon through agricultural management practices.
Activity 7: This project aims to develop the Prairie Weed Monitoring Network (PWMN) and to implement a comprehensive weed biovigilance strategy, including: weed monitoring, risk assessment, and forecasting for the prairie region of Canada. It will include detailed assessments of (i) weed abundance in 4000 fields, (ii) herbicide-resistant (HR) weeds pre-harvest in 800 fields, and (iii) HR kochia and Russian thistle post-harvest in 800 fields, across the prairie provinces. These data, and those of past surveys, will be leveraged along with other open data resources to conduct spatial risk analyses for the evolution of HR weed biotypes of greatest concern and where they are most likely to occur, in addition to the development of a tool to forecast weed community shifts in response to management factors and climate change. Overall, this coordinated suite of objectives will provide farmers, agronomists, agricultural industry, researchers, and policy makers with information required to manage weeds effectively, anticipate new weed threats to farming systems, and mitigate selection pressure for HR weeds.