• Describe Palmer amaranth and waterhemp emergence throughout the growing season and use this information to develop improved programs for controlling pigweed.
• Define the persistence of pigweeds in the soil seedbank across vast geographies and use this information to promote draw-down of the soil seedbank.
• Determine the impact of emergence date of Palmer amaranth and waterhemp from across differing geographies on pigweed seed production and use this information to understand the risk of escaped plants contributing to the soil seedbank and causing increases in resistance problems.
• Understand the likelihood of successfully capturing pigweeds during soybean harvest. This information is vital to the development of harvest weed seed control strategies which may include destruction of weed seed as it exits the combine.
• Determine the suitability and success of various tillage practices across vastly different regions of soybean production for aiding control of pigweeds.
• Determine the suitability and impact of cover crops across vastly different regions of soybean production for aiding control of pigweed.
• Determine the impact of soybean row spacing and seeding rate on aiding pigweed control across various production regions.
• Characterize the effectiveness of multiple modes of action programs that will be promoted for pigweed control in herbicide-tolerant soybean having stacked traits.
• Define the optimum “system” for each state or region in terms of weed control and economic returns through integration of strategies defined as successful in the earlier stages of this project.