Superweeds
Weeds around the world are evolving resistance to numerous herbicides, which researchers warn will have economic and environmental consequences once no weed killers will work on them anymore.
“It is not a matter of if but when we are going to be losing chemical control of these weeds,” says Adam Davis of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Davis adds that once control is lost, the superweeds will cause massive crop losses and increased food prices. The weeds could also exacerbate climate change as even more native landscapes are turned into farmland to make up for the crop losses.
But researchers say resistance can be prevented by rotating different ways of weed control so there is no chance to evolve resistance to any one method.
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