Herbicide resistant weeds are a global problem and are increasingly a challenge for local producers. There are various ongoing projects that try to tackle the problem with focused efforts to collectively address this as an industry.
Through a DSTI-TIA-GrainSA initiative, the Herbicide Action and Resistance Platform (HARP) was formed and aims to establish a National Collaborative Platform for Herbicide Resistance Surveillance and Management. Current HARP institutions are University of Pretoria (South African Herbicide Resistance Initiative), Stellenbosch University (Agronomy: Weed Science), University of the Free State, ARC Small Grains and CenGen. CenGen will use their molecular genetics skill-set to create high-throughput genotyping capacity to detect known mutations. Once that has been established, the team will endeavour to collaborate with other researchers to characterise/identify additional mutations playing a role in herbicide resistance in order to expand the CenGen HARP genotyping services suite.
On the 18th of March 2026, Profs Juan Vorster and Karl Kunert (University of Pretoria) visited CenGen in Worcester to strengthen their collaboration in the HARP project.
In the following week (23 March 2026), Corteva AgriscienceTM brought the well-known weed scientist Prof Christopher Preston (School of Agriculture, Food and Wine College of Sciences, University of Adelaide, Australia) to South Africa to share his expertise with the local industry. Prof Preston works on the understanding and management of herbicide resistant weeds using a multi-disciplinary approach.
The CenGen team has a lot to learn in this field. It was a very valuable experience to get such a broad exposure to various aspects of the challenge, while learning the current methods used to control herbicide resistance.
