Taxonomic and life history bias in herbicide resistant weeds: implications for deployment of resistant crops

Evolved herbicide resistance (EHR) is an important agronomic problem and consequently a food security problem, as it jeopardizes herbicide effectiveness and increases the difficulty and cost of weed management. EHR in weeds was first reported in 1970 and the number of cases has accelerated dramatica...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	PloS one Vol. 8; no. 9; p. e71916
Main Authors:	Holt, Jodie S, Welles, Shana R, Silvera, Katia, Heap, Ian M, Heredia, Sylvia M, Martinez-Berdeja, Alejandra, Palenscar, Kai T, Sweet, Lynn C, Ellstrand, Norman C
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	English
Published:	United States Public Library of Science 09-09-2013 Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Subjects:	Acetolactate synthase Agricultural economics Agronomy Analysis Biological Evolution Crops Crops, Agricultural - drug effects Crops, Agricultural - genetics Developing countries Enzyme Inhibitors - pharmacology Evolution Excitatory postsynaptic potentials Food security Genetic engineering Genetically altered foods Germplasm Herbicide Resistance Herbicides Herbicides - pharmacology LDCs Life history Magnoliopsida - drug effects Magnoliopsida - genetics Medical records Phenotype Phosphates Photosystem II Phylogeny Plant Proteins - antagonists & inhibitors Plant Proteins - genetics Plant sciences Plant Weeds - drug effects Plant Weeds - genetics Seeds Taxonomy Transgenic Vegetative reproduction Websites Weed control Weeds United States > US California
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Summary:	Evolved herbicide resistance (EHR) is an important agronomic problem and consequently a food security problem, as it jeopardizes herbicide effectiveness and increases the difficulty and cost of weed management. EHR in weeds was first reported in 1970 and the number of cases has accelerated dramatically over the last two decades. Despite 40 years of research on EHR, why some weeds evolve resistance and others do not is poorly understood. Here we ask whether weed species that have EHR are different from weeds in general. Comparing taxonomic and life history traits of weeds with EHR to a control group ("the world's worst weeds"), we found weeds with EHR significantly over-represented in certain plant families and having certain life history biases. In particular, resistance is overrepresented in Amaranthaceae, Brassicaceae and Poaceae relative to all weeds, and annuality is ca. 1.5 times as frequent in weeds with EHR as in the control group. Also, for perennial EHR weeds, vegetative reproduction is only 60% as frequent as in the control group. We found the same trends for subsets of weeds with EHR to acetolactate synthase (ALS), photosystem II (PSII), and 5-enolpyruvylshikimate-3-phosphate (EPSP) synthase-inhibitor herbicides and with multiple resistance. As herbicide resistant crops (transgenic or not) are increasingly deployed in developing countries, the problems of EHR could increase in those countries as it has in the USA if the selecting herbicides are heavily applied and appropriate management strategies are not employed. Given our analysis, we make some predictions about additional species that might evolve resistance.
Bibliography:	Conceived and designed the experiments: NCE JSH. Performed the experiments: SRW SMH AMB KTP LCS. Analyzed the data: SRW KS. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: IH. Wrote the paper: JSH SRW NCE. Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competeing interests exist.
ISSN:	1932-6203 1932-6203
DOI:	10.1371/journal.pone.0071916