Effectiveness and Selectivity of Pre- and Post-Emergence Herbicides for Weed Control in Grain Legumes

Grain legumes represent important crops for livestock feed and contribute to novel uses in the food industry; therefore, the best cultivation practices need to be assessed. This study aimed to identify herbicides to meet the current need for controlling broadleaf weeds without phytotoxicity in the grain legume crop per se. Field experiments were undertaken during the 2019 and 2020 growing seasons and laid out in a randomized complete block design with three replicates as follows: four grain legume crops (vetch, pea, faba bean, and white lupine) and nine pre-emergence (PRE) or post-emergence selective (POST) herbicide treatments (PRE: aclonifen, pendimethalin plus clomazone, metribuzin plus clomazone, benfluralin, terbuthylazine plus pendimethalin, S-metolachlor plus pendimethalin, flumioxazin; POST: pyridate, imazamox) alongside weedy check plots. Plant phytotoxicity, crop dry matter, yield features, weed presence, and weed dry matter were assessed during the experiments. There was differential efficacy among the nine herbicide treatments; the weed control was more effective in the case of Veronica arvensis L. and Sonchus spp. L. compared with Chenopodium album L., Sinapis arvensis L., and Silibum marianum L. regardless of the herbicide treatment. The most effective PRE herbicide was flumioxazin, which had the greatest control over the majority of weeds (>70%) resulting in the lowest total weed biomass. The second-best treatment was benfluralin and the mixture of terbuthylazine plus pendimethalin (both had only limited control in S. arvensis). The best POST herbicide was imazamox, with only limited control in S. arvensis. The tested herbicides caused low to medium and transient levels of phytotoxicity mainly in vetch and secondly in peas but not in faba beans and lupines. Concerning all weed management treatments, benfluralin resulted in the highest grain yields for all four grain legume crops during both growing seasons. Among grain legumes, vetch had the highest competitive ability against weeds, whereas peas were the least tolerant against weed competition.

Cytochrome P450-mediated herbicide metabolism in plants: current understanding and prospects

Cytochrome P450s (P450s) have been at the center of herbicide metabolism research as a result of their ability to endow selectivity in crops and resistance in weeds. In the last 20 years, ≈30 P450s from diverse plant species have been revealed to possess herbicide-metabolizing function, some of which were demonstrated to play a key role in plant herbicide sensitivity. Recent research even demonstrated that some P450s from crops and weeds metabolize numerous herbicides from various chemical backbones, which highlights the importance of P450s in the current agricultural systems. However, due to the enormous number of plant P450s and the complexity of their function, expression and regulation, it remains a challenge to fully explore the potential of P450-mediated herbicide metabolism in crop improvement and herbicide resistance mitigation. Differences in the substrate specificity of each herbicide-metabolizing P450 are now evident. Comparisons of the substrate specificity and protein structures of P450s will be beneficial for the discovery of selective herbicides and may lead to the development of crops with higher herbicide tolerance by transgenics or genome-editing technologies. Furthermore, the knowledge will help design sound management strategies for weed resistance including the prediction of cross-resistance patterns. Overcoming the ambiguity of P450 function in plant xenobiotic pathways will unlock the full potential of this enzyme family in advancing global agriculture and food security. © 2020 Society of Chemical Industry.

Absorption and translocation of sulfometuron-methyl in sugarcane (Saccharum officinarum L.) at different growth stages

In Brazil, weed management in sugarcane fields is mainly done with the use of selective herbicide formulations. For many years, diuron+hexazinone was one of the main herbicide mixture formulations used in sugarcane. Later, sulfometuron-methyl was included in the same mixture, which was marketed as a new herbicide formulation for residual in-season weed control in sugarcane. The mixture diuron+hexazinone+sulfometuron-methyl has been widely used in commercial sugarcane fields in Brazil. However, recent field observations have shown that sugarcane plants at different growth stages varied in their phytotoxicity levels after treatment with diuron+hexazinone+sulfometuron-methyl. Greenhouse and laboratory studies were conducted to determine ¹⁴Csulfometuron-methyl absorption and translocation, as well as ¹⁴C distribution in sugarcane at two growth stages, 2 to 3 leaves and 5 to 6 leaves. ¹⁴Csulfometuron-methyl absorption by sugarcane did not differ between the two growth stages. Different patterns of ¹⁴C accumulation were observed, which may explain variations in sulfometuron-methyl phytotoxic responses observed in the field.

Potential roles for microbial endophytes in herbicide tolerance in plants

Herbicide tolerance in crops and weeds is considered to be monotrophic, i.e. determined by the relative susceptibility of the physiological process targeted and the plant's ability to metabolise and detoxify the agrochemical. A growing body of evidence now suggests that endophytes, microbes that inhabit plant tissues and provide a range of growth, health and defence enhancements, can contribute to other types of abiotic and biotic stress tolerance. The current evidence for herbicide tolerance being bitrophic, with both free-living and plant-associated endophytes contributing to tolerance in the host plant, has been reviewed. We propose that endophytes can directly contribute to herbicide detoxification through their ability to metabolise xenobiotics. In addition, we explore the paradigm that microbes can 'prime' resistance mechanisms in plants such that they enhance herbicide tolerance by inducing the host's stress responses to withstand the downstream toxicity caused by herbicides. This latter mechanism has the potential to contribute to the growth of non-target-site-based herbicide resistance in weeds. Microbial endophytes already contribute to herbicide detoxification in planta, and there is now significant scope to extend these interactions using synthetic biology approaches to engineer new chemical tolerance traits into crops via microbial engineering.

Absorption, translocation and metabolism of bispyribac-sodium on rice seedlings under cold stress

BACKGROUND

Rice production is highly affected by weed competition. The efficacy of chemical weed control and crop safety is a function of absorption, translocation and metabolism of herbicides. This study investigates the effect of cold stress 22/16 °C (day/night) on absorption, translocation and metabolism of (14)C-bispyribac-sodium on rice seedlings.

RESULTS

Maximum (14)C-bispyribac-sodium absorption occurred at 24 h after herbicide treatment and was stimulated by the warm 30/22 °C (day/night) temperature. A large amount of total absorbed herbicide was retained in the treated leaf, indicating that bispyribac-sodium had minimal translocation to other plant parts. Piperonyl-butoxide (a P450 inhibitor) plus herbicide caused greater injury than the herbicide alone. In addition, injury on rice plants was enhanced by exposure to cold, emphasizing the negative effect on herbicide metabolism. In the thin-layer chromatography metabolism experiment, cold-grown plants had higher injury and retained more of the parent herbicide than plants grown at a warm temperature.

CONCLUSION

Cold stress reduces bispyribac-sodium absorption and metabolism in rice, but has no effect on translocation.