Burke, I.

Ian Burke

Integrating drones into weed management on the Palouse

Farmers on the Palouse are increasingly spending more resources to manage weeds. Weed management, in part, requires fine scale knowledge of weed populations. Mapping weeds with drones is promising but requires knowledge of environmental variation and weed phenology. Application of drones in weed management is growing globally but local applications on the Palouse are limited. […]

Tracking the Tango Between Tillage, Soil Health, and Weeds

Tillage is a crucial stage in annual agricultural systems that terminates overwintering vegetation, incorporates plant residues, and prepares the soil for crops. These activities degrade soil health and impact indicators such as soil microbial biomass, organic matter, and aggregate stability. Weed populations are also influenced by tillage as seed and vegetative parts are horizontally and […]

Using alternative host plants to improve accuracy of forecasting models for pest aphids

Aphids are abundant, outbreaking insect herbivores that can deal considerable economic damage to cereals and legumes due to pathogens they transmit. While aphid-virus outbreaks can have catastrophic impacts on crops, we do not yet have reliable population models that predict the time and location for areas at high risk for aphid-virus outbreaks. Because these tools […]

Rotating out of weeds and into soil health: Optimizing cover crops in three Columbia Basin organic production systems

Weeds cause extensive loss in agricultural production and are particularly damaging in organic systems. Control generally relies on mechanical cultivation which reduces soil carbon, decimates soil fauna, and increases erosion potential. Cover cropping, a biologically intensive practice, can be an effective tool to reduce weed pressure and improve soil quality, but it also introduces new […]

Quantifying the Weed Seedbank Using Quantitative PCR and Soil Community Analysis

Quantification of  weed seedbanks is essential for the evaluation and improvement of integrated weed management systems by farmers and integral in the Sustaining Resources Grand Challenge. Currently, weed scientists filter seed from the soil and count them – a hopelessly time consuming process that cannot be scaled or used by farmers. If farmers could quantify […]

Breaking bindweed: Can plant growth regulators disrupt apical dominance, deplete a persistent bud bank, and improve the control of perennial weed species in specialty crops?

Field bindweed (Convolvulus arvensis) is notoriously difficult to manage in specialty crop systems, particularly those under organic production. Perennial species possess the abundant nutrient reserves necessary to facilitate plant regrowth from underground, vegetative, and dormant buds following physical or chemical control measures. Research conducted in other species has identified the signature genes involved in regulating […]

Sustainable Crop-Livestock Integration for System Health in the Dryland Inland Pacific Northwest

Dryland wheat-fallow producers have begun switching to a direct seed tillage system for soil health benefits such as reduced runoff, increased water infiltration, increased consistency of crop stands, more and longer period of surface cover from crop residue, better soil moisture, and fewer dust clouds at planting time. However, this practice often requires increased pesticide […]

Interrow cultivation and intercropping for organic transition in dryland crop production systems

Protecting wheat during the transition to organic production and managing soil nitrogen during the organic production phase represent major impediments to increasing organic acreage. We have developed a system that incorporates weed control and the use of a pea intercrop as a source of nitrogen to address these impediments by intercropping winter pea with winter […]

Intercropping, Precision Weed Management, and Pea Breeding for Organic and Conventional Cropping Systems

Research conducted in the 2009-10 and 2010-11 growing seasons had three main components: a winter wheat-winter pea intercropping study, developing an inter-row cultivator with precision guidance for in-season weed management, and a new pea breeding project. (1) Intercropping: The potential use of winter peas as a nitrogen (N) resource for winter wheat was evaluated in […]