engleski

Variability in seedling emergence for European and North American populations of Abutilon theophrasti

Weeds have to adapt their biological cycles according to the different combinations of environmental and agronomic conditions and large intra-specific variability regarding dormancy and germination has been reported. This variability, controlled by the interaction of genetic diversity and maternal effect, could hinder the adoption of IWM strategies and tools. A collaborative project was conducted to compare emergence dynamics under diverse environmental conditions of 12 European and North American populations of A. theophrasti. Seeds were sown at 6 different experimental sites located in Southern and Eastern Europe and seedling emergence was monitored. AlertInf model was tested to evaluate its ability to predict emergence dynamics of the different populations according to weather data. Large inter- population variability was observed in terms of emergence percentage and dynamic with trends consistent across the different sites and related to different seed dormancy level. Populations from Catalonia, Iowa and Minnesota reached higher emergence percentage with earlier and concentrated emergence flushes probably due to low dormancy level, while populations from Croatia, Serbia and Hungary presented high dormancy level considering their low average emergence percentage. Good predictive accuracy of AlertInf model was obtained at the different sites, confirming the possibility of adopting AlertInf model across a wide range of environmental conditions. Achieving better knowledge on inter-population variability can allow to design specific and efficient control strategies, facilitating the replacement of solely herbicide-based managements with real IWM strategies.

population variability ; germination ; emergence ; emergence modelling

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