Roundup Ready

I think there was a tremendous amount.

of research that was done before the Roundup Ready era, right? So you look at the weed science literature in the late 80s, 90s, a lot of work that was done and that kind of went away for a while, I would say during the days that Glyphosate was working as a community of weed scientists.

I think we kind of stopped working on that for a while, but now there is tremendous need again, right? With all the resistance issues we're seeing out there, a lot of interest in cover crops again.

Past eight years here, we've been very fortunate as a larger group to be sponsored by the United Soybean Board.

And it's a very important management decision that helps a lot of producers minimize the negative impact that iron chlorosis can have on yield.

In the summer of 2026, NDSU's breeding program was looking at pretty much all traits, whether it was Enlist, GT27, Roundup Ready, Xtend, as well as conventional varieties, looking at the IDC tolerance.

When you see yellowing of plant leaves with green veins as well as yellowing, browning, and stunted growth during the early stages, that leads to a reduced soybean yield.

So the tests are replicated trials conducted in a location with a history of having IDC.

And so those are things that we definitely want to consider.

And then with the open pollinated varieties, you know, we still have important traits in those as well, particularly the the Roundup Ready or glyphosate resistance trait that really resides currently in the open pollinated varieties.

And so if a grower is having problems with troublesome broadleaf weeds and they're trying to control those in winter canola, then our best bet for doing that is selecting a Roundup Ready variety.

And so producer in that case would probably lean towards an open pollinated variety.

Now we are seeing on the horizon here in fall of 2027, there will be new Roundup Ready hybrids available.

And that's something we haven't really had for a long time.

And so now we have more things to consider in fall of 2027 when we're talking about, okay, what kind of Roundup Ready variety do we want to grow? Do we want to grow an open pollinated or do we want to grow a hybrid? With some of these newer hybrids, as I said, there are a multitude of traits, but I'd say the one that producers are probably most interested in currently is pod shatter resistance.

And that right now typically resides in some of the hybrids.

I agree that the GMO thing, that was a classic example of, I mean, plant breeding, animal breeding, by definition, genetic modification or selection through selections, old school ways, right, is happening.

So, you know, the issue is what it's towards, right? In this case, they're talking about Roundup Ready plants.

That's maybe not, Because who's being served by that particular modification, right? Whereas if I am in my plant breeding selecting for an especially delicious plant, that's quite a different goal.

Or even let's say, you know, maybe RJ is breeding towards a standard of fish that are particularly resilient in the environment that he has to work with.

like

crazy part was Roundup Ready Corn wasn't like.

No, not at all.

In their lineup, it was like 10% of the hybrids.

So would you like to tell us about why the Operations Committee identified that as a priority area?

So as one of our operations committee grower members that sort of suggested the idea, the trial was designed to compare Roundup Ready and the Clearfield Technology canola systems, predominantly trying to focus on ryegrass management.

Roundup Ready herbicide is still relatively new to the South Australian growers.

So there hasn't been a lot of trial work done specifically in the southeast on that technology.

So it's just trying to work out where we can compare what we've been using and moving forward with potentially some new technology.

So it was done at minima, um, uh, just on the Victorian side of the South Australian border.

It was in canola.

We used two or one variety, um, a stacked clear field roundup ready for ID and applied herbicide, um, based on the technology to each trial on the treatment plan.

Then you can, you know, that'll clean up everything.

And the same is true, you know, if you're in a roundup ready situation, you're spraying the weeds, not the crop, right?

So

whenever the weeds are an issue, go ahead and kill them.

And don't worry about the crop stage so much as you worry about the weeds.

We have this discussion with Roundup Ready all the time, is when do you spray the Roundup? And I think we've come to, if there's weeds out there, go ahead and spray.

Yeah, because Roundup Ready alfalfa is genetically resistant to Roundup.

At all growth stages.

I d- I didn't realize it was strictly windborne pollination.

I mean, I know about all the lawsuits over Roundup Ready corn and stuff, but I just remember walking among my corn and, and, uh, the, the, the rows were fairly singing with bees bouncing from flower to flower to flower and just covered up with corn pollen.

Well, I'm not saying that bees wouldn't like it, but the bee isn't gonna take that pollen from the flower they're collecting to take back to the hive and jump down and dump it on an ear of corn.

There's nothing on that ear of corn that's going to attract a bee.

But you're always going to have some exposure to life, say, if you eat in this country.

Yes, many other countries don't allow glyphosate and don't allow Monsanto's Roundup Ready, the brand name, right? Of these seeds, which don't reproduce.

So farmers can't collect seeds at the end of the harvest for planting the next spring because the seeds don't reproduce.

And it's this system designed to keep them always purchasing more from Monsanto.