Solution to Cheat Grass

Solution to Cheat Grass

Cheat grass, medusa head and jointed goat grass are persistent and invasive noxious weeds that displace native range land grasses as well as cereal crops.

USDA Agricultural Research Service Soil Scientist Ann Kennedy has a possible exciting solution — a microbe that is awaiting EPA approval as a bioherbicide. This naturally occurring microbe strictly eliminates the weeds, not the desired crop or native grasses.

Kennedy: "What has been happening in rangeland systems is we've had cheatgrass, medusa head and even some jointed goat grass come in — they aren't like the bunch grasses that are in native rangeland. Because these bunch grasses that grow are very clever how they grow as a community because they give each other space. That space allows each plant to take up that water that is right there underneath the soil. So the bunch grasses and rangeland plants do a really good job of co-existing. Whereas cheatgrass just takes over all that space and grows in a totally coverage sort of thing. Every space is taken up by cheatgrass."

Once approved this new bioherbicide can be applied to crops and rangeland very economically costing less than $10 an acre to apply.

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