Blackgrass weed found in Carlow plot
Sterile Brome is a very common grassweed that can be found predominantly at bases of ditches, hedgerows and in field margins. File Picture.
The highly invasive blackgrass weed has been found in a commercial wildflower mixture growing in an experimental plot in Carlow.
And according to Teagasc, if this weed is widespread in mixtures which were planted on farms, schools, gardens, and amenity areas across the country, it poses a huge risk of contamination to tillage crops and the Irish tillage industry.
In recent years, the farming body has had a policy of increasing habitats and improving biodiversity on all of its research and college farms.
In Oak Park, for example - which is predominantly in tillage - this has included establishing new hedges and field margins on cultivated fields.
Researchers have been monitoring field margins for beneficial insects and their impact on insect pests in adjoining crops.
Additionally, margins of native grass mixes of cocksfoot and timothy have been particularly effective in stopping sterile brome, a grass weed in cereals, from spreading from the hedgerow into the crop.
“Blackgrass is widespread in the UK where it is also resistant to a wide range of herbicides and very costly to control, in some instances requiring the destruction of crops,” said John Spink, Head of Crops, Environment and Land Use Programme, Teagasc.
“If the wildflower seed has been imported from the UK then resistant blackgrass may have been imported with it.
“The blackgrass is just beginning to flower and because of the risk of spread of seed into neighbouring crops, unfortunately, this field margin has had to be destroyed”.
