Identifying what type of weeds are showing up on a farming operation is the most important step in formulating a management strategy. When a new type of weed begins to develop in fields identification can often be problematic. There are several resources available that can help to verify what type of weed a grower may be dealing with.
“One strategy is actually contacting your local farm advisor and bringing an unknown specimen in and having them help you with the identification,” said Lynn Sosnoskie, Agronomy and Weed Science Advisor for Merced and Madera Counties. “There are various books that are available for weed ID in the western United States. One is called Weeds of the West; the other is called Weeds of California and Other Western States. They’re very good tools.”
There are also applications that are available on smart phones that can help growers with weed identification. Sosnoskie noted that the PlantNet application “let’s you take a picture, or upload a picture from your library, and it will use visual recognition software to compare your picture with a database of images and try to tell you what you’re looking at.”
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