Weed Science... What Science?

Wheat Science? No, Weed Science.
Weeeed Science? No, not that kind of weed science.
Oh, Weed Science? What's that?

That's a good question, and a question I may be able to answer as I complete the first year of my training as a graduate student in Weed Science.

Some might say that weeds are just plants out of place. If that's the case, Weed Science is the study of managing and gaining knowledge of plants that grow in areas where they are unwanted.  An example of this could be figuring out ways to rid your luscious, green lawn of that pesky dandelion problem that keeps popping up each spring. Weed scientists can suggest ways to control that dandelion, with methods ranging from changing the type of grass that is grown to chemical control.

Dandelion, maybe the most infamous weed of all.

Another example of managing plants out of place is ridding soybean fields of corn plants. That sounds a little weird, right? Corn is a crop, not a weed! That isn't always the case though. If corn is left in a field after being harvested (the harvesting process doesn't collect 100% of the seeds that come out of a corn field in the fall), corn that grows the next season is a weed. If it's growing in a soybean field, the farmer growing those soybeans isn't looking to harvest any corn at the end of the season and the corn only detracts from the overall success of the growing soybeans. This is another situation in which Weed Scientists can suggest ways to manage a plant (in this case corn) that's out of place.

Volunteer corn in a soybean field. 

Okay, so Weed Scientists control plants out of place. Is that it?

No. Weed Scientists also study how plants out of place grow and develop. They also study how these plants interact with the environment around them. This knowledge helps Weed Scientists understand why some plants are better at being weeds than other plants. It also helps in their management. For example, scientists discovered that certain types of flea beetles love eating the leaves and stems of leafy spurge, a very competitive, long-lived plant. In states like North Dakota, where leafy spurge is a problem, flea beetles have been released to decrease the overall number of leafy spurge plants. 

Flea beetles munching on leafy spurge.

More recently, Weed Scientists have worked on understanding why some weeds are harder to control with herbicides than others. This involves using molecular techniques (looking at a weed's DNA) to look for differences between weeds that are easy to control and weeds that are more difficult to control. 

Extracted DNA, an invaluable tool that Weed Scientists
use to look for differences between weeds. 

In short, the discipline of Weed Science studies plants out of place by looking at how they respond to management techniques, how they interact with their environments, and how they differ genetically. The science of making sense of plants out of place. That is what science Weed Science is. 

Photo credit: [1][2][3][4]