Efficacy study and resistance detection for pre-emergence herbicides under greenhouse conditions; a method comparison for pendimethalin

Aim of the presented study is to demonstrate the impact of two different irrigation methods, from below and from above, and two different pendimethalin formulations, capsule suspension (CS) and suspension concentrate (SC) on the control efficacy of pendimethalin against Silky bent-grass (Apera spica-venti) under greenhouse conditions. We assume that changes regarding the efficacy level of pendimethalin due to methodological factors will affect the reliability of resistance detection. Five populations of Silky bent-grass were selected according to their various multi-resistance patterns. One population was a standard sensitive reference population while the remaining four populations are characterized by different resistance patterns against herbicides of the HRAC groups A, B, C2, K1 and N. Pendimethalin dose response studies were performed by taking into account the experimental factors (1) irrigation system and (2) pendimethalin formulation. The results show that a combination of CS-formulation and irrigation from above resulted in a significantly reduced efficacy of pendimethalin independent of the resistance profile of the tested populations. Therefore no differentiation between susceptible and tolerant populations was possible. In contrary the SC-formulation resulted in an overkill situation under irrigation from below even at dosages lower than 20% of the recommended field rate. Thus the differentiation between the resistant and susceptible biotype was impossible as well. For the detection of reduced tolerance against pendimethalin a combination of SC-formulation and irrigation from above was found to be favourable and thus this should become the standard procedure for pendimethalin resistance testing.