Increasing wheat sowing rates for weed control: does it lead to lower yield or quality?

Findings include:

• Growers need to employ non herbicide strategies such as increasing crop competition, to aid in the battle against weeds.
• Increasing sowing rates to increase crop competitiveness may be cheaper and easier to adopt than alternates such as reducing row spacings.
• In 99% of yield and 97% of screenings comparisons there was no negative impacts from moving from the lowest population to the next highest (60-100 or 30-70 plants/m2).
• Lower sowing rates often resulted in lower yields than higher rates.

For more information, have a look at our 2025 GRDC update paper: https://www.grainorana.com.au/documents?download=198 

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