This project built on many years of weeds work supported by CRDC and value added to earlier research, while providing strategic information to growers in support of MyBMP, based around updating WEEDpak.

WEEDpak, the guide to integrated weed management in cotton, was a collaborative document written in 2001/2 and released in hard-copy in the spring of 2002. It covered a wide range of weed issues, weed identification material, guidelines for developing an Integrated Weed Management (IWM) approach for cotton, and extensive research findings on the management of specific, hard to control weeds. It was released with 37 weeds and 276 pages of information. WEEDpak has gradually been updated and at the time this project was initiated, included 102 weeds and 612 pages of information, including the Herbicide Damage Identification and Information Guide, a totally new section for WEEDpak. This additional information is only available through the cotton website, where WEEDpak has been the most frequently sought information on the site.

Nevertheless, some strategically important parts of WEEDpak were badly out of date and need updating, such as the IWM Guidelines, Section B2, which were written in the early days of Roundup Ready cotton and primarily covered the conventional cotton production system of the 1990’s. This document needed updating and linking through to the weed components of MyBMP.

The herbicide damage section of WEEDpak is becoming increasingly important, with the spread of cotton into new areas and the growing complexity of the farming system. This guide will need to continue to grow in response to growers seeking information on new herbicides.

The weed threshold work has been a world-class research break-through, but results in research have highlighted limitations to the weed density based approach. Further research will explore the option of going to a weed biomass based threshold to overcome these issues and improve usability.