US (IL): Growing weeds to find out how to fight them
The Southern Illinois University weed scientist has a greenhouse full of plants and a refrigerator full of seeds of some of the most hated weeds in the Midwest. She shares her workspace with enemies of the farmer.
Gage is one of a number of individuals — mostly university and herbicide company researchers — who raise various weed species. There are a couple of reasons, one being maintaining a supply of troublesome plants on which to test the efficacy of herbicides.
“We have lots of Palmer amaranth, waterhemp, morning glory, grasses,” she said while checking on specimens in a university greenhouse.
“We collect the weed seeds for the identification we want to do, then germinate them.”
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