BOZEMAN, Mont. — Montana State University has received more than $900,000 from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to study an agricultural weed that is causing problems for Montana farmers.

The study will look at how wild oats become resistant to herbicides and look at new weed management techniques.

Wild oats slow the productivity of local farmers, especially in barley crops.

Montana is the nation’s largest producer of barley, making the issue most applicable to the state.

Montana State University sent the following:

With new funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, scientists in Montana State University’s Department of Plant Sciences and Plant Pathology will try to fill the knowledge gaps surrounding an agricultural weed that has caused problems for Montana producers of decades.

Jennifer Lachowiec, an associate professor in MSU’s College of Agriculture, has received two grants from the USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture totaling more than $900,000 to study how wild oats develop herbicide resistance and to explore techniques weed management.

Lachowiec’s work bridges several disciplines, including plant genetics, remote sensing and molecular biology. The project, which includes collaborators William Dyer and Barbara Keith in the Department of Plant Sciences and Plant Pathology and Tim Seipel and Paul Nugent in the Department of Land Resources and Environmental Sciences, aims to provide agricultural producers with recommendations for either precise applications of herbicides, either for alternative management. practices.

“Wild oats are a major weed pest in Montana,” Lachowiec said. “It’s a problem not just for our local farmers, but for the people they serve. They don’t want to lose some of their productivity to wild oats.”

Wild oats can be a big problem when competing with barley, a commodity in which Montana is the national leader, making the research particularly applicable closest to home. About 920,000 acres of barley were planted in Montana in 2024, according to the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service, which issues annual reports for the major crops. Montana has been the nation’s top barley-producing state for several years, and about a quarter of the state’s total barley acreage in 2024 was planted with MSU-developed barley varieties used for malt, feed and forage.

Lachowiec and the other MSU scientists are examining a variety of wild oat qualities. Previous research in Dyer’s lab has shown that pigments in the leaves of herbicide-resistant plants make them appear darker green than herbicide-susceptible ones. After this discovery, the researchers began using drones to take pictures of the fields, looking to see if the same color pattern would appear in the fields they observed in the lab.

“If we look at plants in the field that we know are resistant or not, can we see that difference?” Lachowiec said. “A second important aspect is working with farmers to take pictures of the wild oats they see in the field, also analyze the color of the weeds and get an insight into what people are encountering.”

With continued precision research involving drone imagery and plant color data collected at different wavelengths, Lachowiec said the ultimate hope is to develop a tool that farmers could use to more easily identify resistant weeds, without having to collect their seeds and send samples to a laboratory for testing. . Growers can help the research themselves by submitting images of wild oats on their own land, which scientists can then analyze. Tim Seipel, MSU Extension specialist, has been working to communicate with farmers across the state to learn more about the problems they face with wild oats. Interested farmers can find resources and information about research collaborations at Seipel’s Cropland Weed Ecology Lab website.

“We hand out color calibration cards to determine if you’re taking a photo on a cloudy day versus a sunny day, because those plants will look different,” Lachowiec said. “If you put the color card on the background, we can calibrate the images. And then, with those calibrations, we’ll be able to compare plant color directly between different locations and different farms. And that will allow us to get a better sense of what wild oats look like across the state.”

Other scientific studies will explore the effectiveness of herbicides in different environments. While many herbicides are better at controlling weeds in warmer conditions, Lachowiec said wild oats show the opposite trend, becoming more resistant in warmer weather. The MSU team will aim to identify how wild oat becomes more resistant to herbicides in warmer climates, using genetic mapping and gene transcription to identify cellular mechanisms of resistance and potentially testing new tools that can target these mechanisms.

Lachowiec said wild oats have been a concern in Montana because farmers grow small grains and their degree of herbicide resistance has changed significantly in recent years. Because resistant wild oats are now more widely found in Montana and are frequently resistant to all common agricultural herbicides, applying those products where they won’t work costs producers unnecessary money and can lead to further herbicide resistance development as well as harm others , beneficial plants nearby.

“By understanding how herbicide resistance can be induced by stressful environments such as high temperatures, we can inform the development of new tools and strategies to overcome weeds and prevent ineffective herbicide use,” Lachowiec said. “This will help improve environmental health and economic outcomes for agricultural markets.”