Impact of crop-topping and swathing on the viable seed production of wild radish (Raphanus raphanistrum)

Abstract

Crop-topping, the practice of applying non-selective herbicides at crop maturity, has proved to be an effective management technique in preventing the input of seed into the seedbank for some annual weed species of southern Australian crop production systems. However, the efficacy of this practice on the dominant broad-leaf weed of these systems, wild radish, is not well understood. These studies investigated the effect of crop-topping and swathing on the viable seed production of wild radish. Crop-topping with either glyphosate or sprayseed (paraquat 135 g/L + diquat 115 g/L) can provide large reductions of 80–90% in viable seed production of wild radish plants present in crops at the end of the growing season. However, the efficacy of this practice was found to be highly variable and therefore, cannot be relied upon to consistently produce these large reductions in seed numbers. Similarly, swathing also produced large reductions in viable seed production but results from this practice were even less consistent than crop-topping treatments. For all treatments, early application timings of growth stage 6.5 or earlier, were optimum for targeting wild radish seed production. However, these treatment timings also resulted in large crop yield losses of ~30%. To preserve at least 90% of crop yield, crop-topping and swathing treatments need to be delayed until wild radish growth stage 8.5, with expected reductions in seed numbers of up to 70%. However, in high-density infestations the need to preserve grain yield will be less important than preventing substantial inputs of wild radish seed into the seedbank.