Wide Screening of Germplasm for Herbicide Tolerance in Peanuts

Weed interference is one of the most important production challenges that growers face. For this reason, herbicide use is a common practice to prevent yield reductions due to weed interference. However, in order to be able to spray an herbicide in peanut fields, this crop has to show a level of tolerance high enough so the rates used will kill the weeds but will not injure the peanuts. Similarly to their differences in morphology, yield potential or disease resistance; peanut genotypes can also have differences in herbicide tolerance. The variation can be the level of tolerance to the same herbicide or to different herbicides. Unfortunately, herbicide tolerance field studies are expensive and time consuming. A more efficient strategy to minimize these issues is to have a clear understanding of the herbicide tolerance of the breeding material used when crosses are designed and selection is done. This allows not only anticipating potential herbicide injury to herbicides not used during selection and seed increase, but also more importantly it enables the active incorporation of herbicide tolerance into new varieties. Ultimately, by increasing the level of tolerance of commercially grown peanut varieties will allow herbicide companies to increase the rates recommended in the labels resulting in broader and more effective weed control in peanut production.