About

Creeping perennial weeds have strong impacts on arable production, causing crop quantity and quality losses unless controlled. The common practices of arable farmers to control creeping perennial weeds are intensive inversion tillage and herbicides (especially glyphosate). However, intensive inversion tillage by ploughing not only consumes lots of energy, but also diminishes the soil biological activities. Indiscriminate use of herbicides has side effects on human health, non-target species, and the wider environment (e.g., water quality).

Agro-ecological management claims that sustainable agricultural systems should rely as much as possible on ecological processes to ensure long-term food security, human welfare and environmental protection.
The objective of AC/DC-weeds is to implement more and better agro-ecological management for creeping perennials in arable farming. The overall aim of this project is to reduce plough-tillage in organic and conventional farming, and to replace glyphosate in the latter system.

Results

AC/DC-weeds develop agro-ecological technologies to manage creeping perennial weeds on arable land. Focusing on three species, important in North and Central Europe, we investigate new technics and optimise crop husbandry. Creeping perennials occur patchy, hence we work on mapping, identifying and delineating them in fields with UAVs. Existing knowledge and new results feed qualitative modelling, which supports agro-ecological management decisions about creeping perennials. We further visualise the spatial-temporal growth and distribution and the effect of agro-ecological management in a graphic web tool. Environmental and economic effects of agro-ecological management of creeping perennials are assessed based on data collected in field experiments and existing data collections.