To meet increasing demands for livestock production, agribusinesses around the world are breeding new varieties of pasture plants. Unfortunately, many of the plant characteristics promoted for use in pasture – higher growth rates, greater resistance to disease, higher tolerance of environmental extremes and higher reproduction – are shared by invasive species. Coupled with the fact that many pasture species are already highly invasive, this effectively means that agribusiness may be inadvertently breeding “super weeds”, which farmers then spread across the landscape.
And, just to make matters worse, this increased weed threat is going largely unchecked: even countries with leading biosecurity do not consider the weed risk posed by plant varieties that are developed within-country.
But all is not lost!
As described in a new PNAS paper led by Don Driscoll, there are various ways in which this problem can be fixed.
Read more about this issue in Nature, The Conversation and ESA’s Hot Topics or see more about it in Don’s video.
Ecological Change 