Title: A comprehensive guide to electrical weed management
Electrical weed management (EWM) is starting the deliver the potential, and even more. Dr Charles Merfield from Future Farming Centre (NZ) is an expert in non-chemical weeding and has produced a substantial and comprehensive guide on EWM that aims to provide farmers, growers, other land managers e.g., urban areas as well as researchers a thorough grounding in EWM.
The highly recommended publication also identifies and explains two sub-forms of EWM: (1) electrothermal that kills plant through heat, and (2) electrobiological that does not heat plants by any significant amount but appears to kill them through disrupting their physiology.
Electrobiological while still ‘only’ a research concept offers the potential to kill weeds with the lowest possible energy use of any weed management technique. Electrothermal is already below the energy use of herbicides.
The report also covers: EWM in the context of integrated weed management and agroecology and its history. There is an energy and electricity primer. Discussion of mode of action, iInteractions with plant physiology and morphology and the key role of meristems. Machine design, impacts on soil biology as well as current companies and their machines are covered.
A useful comparison with existing thermal weeding approaches and energy use by all forms of weed management is included.
