AP: (Roundup)-resistant weed worries farmers

Dec 18, 9:29 PM EST

Herbicide-resistant weed worries farmers

By ELLIOTT MINOR
Associated Press Writer

TIFTON, Ga. (AP) -- The cotton industry is concerned about the discovery of a herbicide-resistant weed that spreads easily, can grow an inch a day even during droughts and could force farmers to return to older growing methods that were harsher on the environment.

"It is potentially the worse threat since the boll weevil," said Alan York, weed scientist at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, referring to the voracious beetle that devastated Southern cotton crops in the early 1900s and forced farmers to switch to alternatives such as peanuts.

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The weed that is causing concern is Palmer amaranth, a type of pig weed that grows 6 to 10 feet tall. Amaranth that resists the most common herbicide used in cotton, glyphostate, has been confirmed in 10 of North Carolina's 100 counties, four of Georgia's 159 counties and is suspected in Tennessee, South Carolina and Arkansas, scientists say.

If someone were trying to design a particularly nasty weed, Palmer amaranth could be the model, York said.

"It's an extremely competitive weed," he said. "It's extremely prolific. It's an efficient ... bad weed."

In Georgia, where the weed has been confirmed in 48 fields, amaranth took over some fields and the cotton had to be cut down, rather than harvested, said University of Georgia weed scientist Stanley Culpepper. The weed can damage cotton pickers, the huge machines that pluck the world's leading natural fiber from the cotton bolls.

Glyphostate is sold under several brand names, but the leading product is Roundup, made by Monsanto.

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Palmer Amaranth
Amaranthus palmeri Amaranth Family ( Amaranthaceae ), Palmer Amaranth. Also known as .

An erect summer annual that usually reaches 6 1/2 feet tall. Some have been seen as tall as 15 feet. It is considered a weedy herb.

However, in Mexico, the seeds are dried, mixed with honey and baked. This produces a very nutritious sweet, food that is very highly prized as a candy in Mexico. We will include photos of such a candy factory in Tlaxcala, near Mexico City.

Amaranth was so necessary to both the religion and nutrition of the Aztecs that it was one of the four grains considered as acceptable tribute from outlying parts of the empire, the other three being corn, beans and chia. The Mendocino Codex indicates that the equivalent of the modern measure of 4,000 tons of amaranth a year arrived in Tenochtitlan.

The leaves and seeds of the amaranth plant are still characteristic ingredients in Mexican cuisine, especially in the states of Morelos, Mexico, Puebla, Tlaxcala, and particularly Oaxaca, where the plant is widely cultivated as a valuable cash crop, worth four times more per kilo than corn. This is understandable, given the fact that amaranth provides a high quality protein, with a nearly perfect balance of essential amino acids, including abundant lysine and methionine, not found in most grains.