Introduction
The city of New Fort has many flower beds that the city uses organic herbicides and pesticides to treat. Even though the same substances are used to care for flower beds in the city, volunteers and gardeners can independently choose methods of caring for plants at each site. The Garden Club used Herbicide A along with other flowerbed treatments, including fortifying the soil with compost, removing weeds by hand, and using garden tools to loosen the soil. Initially, the herbicide showed good results, destroying unwanted weeds by 95%.
However, over time, the weeds quickly recover and grow larger and denser. In this regard, Garden Club volunteers and city officials assumed that the problem was an expired herbicide and decided to replace it with a new one. These actions did not produce the desired results on the site maintained by the Garden Club. However, in other flowerbeds where the same chemical was used, the weeds disappeared after the first use. Therefore, the cause of the problem is not the poor quality of the herbicide used but the flowerbed itself in the city park.
Hypotheses
Hypothesis 1
If the broadleaf weeds on the Garden Club site have developed resistance to herbicide A, repeated applications of the herbicide will become less effective over time.
Hypothesis 2
The compost that was the fortified soil of a flower bed in a city park contained weed seeds and caused them to grow faster, acting as fertilizer.
Herbicide Resistance
One hypothesis that may explain the problem is that the weeds on the Garden Club property have developed resistance to the herbicides. Resistance refers to the ineffective use of weed control agents, which may have the opposite effect (Jugulam & Shyam, 2019). The script says that after applying the herbicide, the weeds began to grow more. Additionally, volunteers noted that they seemed to use Herbicide A more frequently over time. This demonstrates that the strength of weed resistance and tolerance has increased over time.
Moreover, the possibility of the development of herbicide resistance in weeds may be indicated by differences in the effectiveness of the substance in different areas. According to Jugulam and Shyam (2019), resilience is influenced by various factors. For example, these mechanisms can develop in weeds “in response to biotic and abiotic stresses, which enable them to adapt to the growing conditions” (Jugulam & Shyam, 2019, p. 23). Moreover, these processes can be influenced by other environmental conditions, including temperature, the presence of nutrients in the soil, and access to air.
While other flowerbeds experienced success with the new batch of Herbicide A, the Garden Club plot did not show the same level of effectiveness. This discrepancy suggests that the broadleaf weeds at the Garden Club site may have evolved specific resistance mechanisms. The soil of the site could contain seeds of different subspecies of weeds with higher resistance, and frequent use of the herbicide could contribute to its increase (Travlos et al., 2020). Consequently, genetic mutations developed in the weeds in a flowerbed in a city park. Moreover, the script indicates that the Garden Club volunteers used garden tools to loosen the soil. This could promote increased growth of weeds from grains contained in the soil.
Finally, the script noted that after each application of the substance, the weeds grew thicker and became larger. This may indicate genetic inheritance of herbicide resistance (Ghanizadeh et al., 2019). In this case, each new generation adopts the genetic characteristics of previous plants, including mechanisms of resistance to external factors. This feature arises as an indicator of the evolution of weeds and their adaptation to survive in different conditions (Travlos et al., 2020). Moreover, repeated use of the same herbicide leads to the strengthening and formation of new protective mechanisms that are transferred to new plants. As a result, after each use of the substance, plants become less susceptible to it.
Testing the Hypothesis
Identifying herbicide resistance in the early stages is critical for effective weed management. Several experiments can be conducted to test this hypothesis. First, this may involve testing the resistance of weeds from a flowerbed in a city park in a controlled environment. To do this, it is necessary to collect plant samples and expose them to Herbicide A under constant observation of their reaction. Moreover, for greater clarity, this testing must be carried out on weeds from other plots of land in order to exclude violations in the mechanism of action of the substance.
Second, it may involve genetic analysis of the weed to identify mutations. To do this, it is necessary to conduct a comparative analysis of weeds that were susceptible to the effects of Herbicide A in different flower beds. The presence of significant differences between samples at the genetic level indicates mutations that occurred in the weeds from a flower bed in a city park, which led to their resistance to external influences. These tests will help determine the reasons for the differences in the responses of weeds from different soils to the effects of the herbicide. Moreover, identifying the development of herbicide resistance in plants supports theories of evolution and natural selection, in which organisms adapt and modify to ensure their survival.
References
Ghanizadeh, H., Buddenhagen, C. E., Harrington, K. C., & James, T. K. (2019). The genetic inheritance of herbicide resistance in weeds. Critical Reviews in Plant Sciences, 38(4), 295-312. Web.
Jugulam, M., & Shyam, C. (2019). Non-target-site resistance to herbicides: Recent developments. Plants, 8(10), 417-432. Web.
Travlos, I., de Prado, R., Chachalis, D., & Bilalis, D. J. (2020). Herbicide resistance in weeds: Early detection, mechanisms, dispersal, new insights and management issues. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 8, 1-5. Web.