Farmers who are fans of clopyralid are being sought to do survey

By Anna Smith Southern Alberta Newspapers on April 21, 2022.

Producers looking to grow wheat this season with a fondness for clopyralid have the opportunity to help further research for prevention of leaching into neighbouring soil, as part of a study with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada.

Caitlin Watt, environmental chemistry research biologist, is looking for field sites to look at clopyralid or lontrel residues in soils, specifically in wheat fields. The selective herbicide is not easily broken down in bio-beds, and she is looking to better understand how it might better be degraded instead of escaping into the edges of fields.

“Something that we found in the prairies is that clopyralid, the herbicide that we’re interested in looking at, is just not readily degraded in these systems,” said Watt. “So we were curious to know, is there a specific micro-organism that eats this compound? And could we potentially add soils from fields that have been exposed to clopyralid to the bio-beds to facilitate the degradation of that compound so it is removed in these filtration systems and not just coming out the other side of the bio-bed? Essentially that’s how this work kind of started. And so we’ve done some lab experiments where we’ve spiked soil to look for potential micro-organisms to degrade clopyralid.”

Watt is specifically looking for wheat or cereal growers, with a history of use with the herbicide, to better understand the relationship between clopyralid and the micro-organisms in the soil. The study has been funded by the Alberta Wheat Commission.

“We are interested in sampling fields out in the real world to see, OK, how do the micro-organisms shift with applications of clopyralid? Is there a difference before it’s sprayed and afterwards sprayed? Or fields that have long-term use of it? Or? Those are the kinds of questions that we’re looking to answer. And we’d like some real-world examples,” said Watt.