The future of weed control In integrated weed management,
farmers employ a diversity of weed-killing techniques, including
tillage, cultural practices, and methods for depleting the weed
seed bank, rather than depending solely on the spraying of
Roundup or another single tool. But diversification isn’t the
same as true integration, cautions University of Nebraska-
Lincoln weed ecologist, Steve Young. Why? Because most
integrated weed management practices still manage every weed the
same, regardless of location or season, and they’re usually
deployed one at a time rather than together. Young is now hoping
to change that by developing a fundamentally different approach
to weed control. In the automated systems he envisions, sensor
and computer technologies onboard a tractor would first
categorize each plant in a farmer’s field as either weed or
crop, and then go on to identify the species of weed. Once those
identifications were made, one of several weed fighting tools
located on the tractor could be applied to