Harvest Weed Seed Control (HWSC)

杂草是农业生产力的最大消耗之一——仅黑草一项每年就给英国农业造成4亿英镑的损失。其中一个主要原因是它已经建立了对除草剂的抗性，农民依靠除草剂来控制它。其他杂草的问题也在增加，因为产品撤回和耕作方式的改变减少了农民可用除草剂的选择。英国小麦生产现在只依赖一种除草剂：草甘膦，这令人担忧。农民们越来越多地转向其他控制杂草的方法，但最有效的方法之一——把杂草种子犁下去阻止它发芽——在燃料成本上是昂贵的，同时把土壤释放到大气中大量的二氧化碳，加剧了气候变化的影响。控制杂草蔓延的一种方法是防止它们的种子落在土壤上。这可以通过收割杂草种子控制（HWSC）系统来实现，通过该系统，从联合收割机后部出来的谷壳，包括杂草种子，通过磨机使其无法存活。尽管这些系统已在世界其他地区（即澳大利亚、加拿大和美国）使用，但它们尚未在英国进行测试。这对不耕种土地的再生农业农民来说尤其重要，他们也缺乏关于收获时留下的可存活杂草种子水平的知识，因此不知道这种设备是否适合英国的农民。该项目旨在测试HWSC设备对英国农业系统的适用性，并探索如何利用它来加倍种植棘手的杂草。此外，将设计一个供英国农民使用的数据收集协议，以产生收获时杂草种子可用性的基准数据，为未来的研究和创新提供信息，并允许农民在自己的农场收集数据，以帮助他们制定控制决策。

Grassweeds are one of farming's biggest drains on productivity -- blackgrass alone costs the UK farming industry £0.4bn every year.One of the main reasons is that it has built up resistance to the herbicides on which farmers rely to keep it in check. Problems with other grassweeds are also on the rise as product withdrawals and changing farming practices reduce the choice of weedkillers available to farmers. UK wheat production is now alarmingly reliant on just one herbicide: glyphosate.Farmers are increasingly turning to other means of weed control, but one of the most effective - ploughing down the weed seed to stop it germinating - is expensive in fuel costs, while turning the soil releases huge volumes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, exacerbating the effect of climate change.One means of controlling weeds spreading is by preventing their seeds falling on the soil. That can be achieved with Harvest weed seed control (HWSC) systems whereby the chaff that comes out the back of the combine harvester, including the weed seed, is passed through a mill to make it unviable. Although these systems have been used in other parts of the world (i.e. Australia, Canada and the US) they are yet to be tested in the UK.This is particularly relevant to regenerative agriculture farmers who don't till the soil, there is also a lack of knowledge on the level of viable weed seed left standing at harvest and therefore if such equipment will be suitable to farmers in the UK.This project aims to test the suitability of HWSC equipment to English farming systems and explore how cultivations can be used with this to double down on tricky weeds.Furthermore, a data collection protocol for use by UK farmers will be designed to produce the benchmark data on weed seed availability at harvest to inform both future research and innovations and to allow farmers to collect data on their own farm to help inform their control decisions.