Impact of 40 Years Use of Different Herbicide Strategies and Crop Rotations on Weed Communities in Two Sites of the Czech Republic

Understanding the impact of farming practices on the composition of weed communities has important implications for the sustainability of weed management strategies. This study analyses data from a 40-year experiment established at two sites in the Czech Republic in 1972. The impact of herbicide strategies on the weed communities was evaluated in multi-crop rotation (MCR) with 50% cereals, and simple crop rotations (SCR) with 75% cereals. The following two herbicide strategies were compared: (1) simple treatment with synthetic auxins only in the simple crop rotation, and (2) targeted herbicide combinations with particular use of sulfonylureas, triazines, ureas and synthetic auxins. Untreated plots were included for reference purposes. Results showed that crop was the major factor determining weed community composition and explained 18% of the total variation in the case of untreated controls. However, herbicide treatment reduced the crop effect to 11%. The highest average increase of Shannon’s diversity index was by 25.4% after 44 years at the untreated plots in SCR, and it decreased by 15.1% at the treated plots in MCR. Weed species evenness € increased at all plots by an average of 23%. Simpson’s dominance index decreased at untreated plots in both crop rotations and plots treated with auxins, with the highest 44.8% decrease at the untreated plots in SCR. On the contrary, Simpson’s index increased by 33,3% on the treated plots in MCR. Herbicide selection depended on the occurrence and density of target weed species, and led to greater decrease in weed diversity and population densities in the diversified crop rotations.