Since 1996, genetically modified herbicide-resistant (HR) crops, particularly glyphosate-resistant (GR) crops, have transformed the tactics that corn, soybean, and cotton growers use to manage weeds. The use of GR crops continues to grow, but weeds are adapting to the common practice of using only glyphosate to control weeds. Growers using only a single mode of action to manage weeds need to change to a more diverse array of herbicidal, mechanical, and cultural practices to maintain the effectiveness of glyphosate. Unfortunately, the introduction of GR crops and the high initial efficacy of glyphosate often lead to a decline in the use of other herbicide options and less investment by industry to discover new herbicide active ingredients. With some exceptions, most growers can still manage their weed problems with currently available selective and HR crop-enabled herbicides. However, current crop management systems are in jeopardy given the pace at which weed populations are evolving glyphosate resistance. New HR crop technologies will expand the utility of currently available herbicides and enable new interim solutions for growers to manage HR weeds, but will not replace the long-term need to diversify weed management tactics and discover herbicides with new modes of action. This paper reviews the strengths and weaknesses of anticipated weed management options and the best management practices that growers need to implement in HR crops to maximize the long-term benefits of current technologies and reduce weed shifts to difficult-to-control and HR weeds.

Current herbicide and herbicide trait practices are changing in response to the rapid spread of glyphosate-resistant weeds. Growers urgently needed glyphosate when glyphosate-resistant crops became available because weeds were becoming widely resistant to most commonly used selective herbicides, making weed management too complex and time consuming for large farm operations. Glyphosate made weed management easy and efficient by controlling all emerged weeds at a wide range of application timings. However, the intensive use of glyphosate over wide areas and concomitant decline in the use of other herbicides led eventually to the widespread evolution of weeds resistant to glyphosate. Today, weeds that are resistant to glyphosate and other herbicide types are threatening current crop production practices. Unfortunately, all commercial herbicide modes of action are over 20 years old and have resistant weed problems. The severity of the problem has prompted the renewal of efforts to discover new weed management technologies. One technology will be a new generation of crops with resistance to glyphosate, glufosinate and other existing herbicide modes of action. Other technologies will include new chemical, biological, cultural and mechanical methods for weed management. From the onset of commercialization, growers must now preserve the utility of new technologies by integrating their use with other weed management technologies in diverse and sustainable systems.

Since 1996, genetically modified herbicide-resistant crops, primarily glyphosate-resistant soybean, corn, cotton and canola, have helped to revolutionize weed management and have become an important tool in crop production practices. Glyphosate-resistant crops have enabled the implementation of weed management practices that have improved yield and profitability while better protecting the environment. Growers have recognized their benefits and have made glyphosate-resistant crops the most rapidly adopted technology in the history of agriculture. Weed management systems with glyphosate-resistant crops have often relied on glyphosate alone, have been easy to use and have been effective, economical and more environmentally friendly than the systems they have replaced. Glyphosate has worked extremely well in controlling weeds in glyphosate-resistant crops for more than a decade, but some key weeds have evolved resistance, and using glyphosate alone has proved unsustainable. Now, growers need to renew their weed management practices and use glyphosate with other cultural, mechanical and herbicide options in integrated systems. New multiple-herbicide-resistant crops with resistance to glyphosate and other herbicides will expand the utility of existing herbicide technologies and will be an important component of future weed management systems that help to sustain the current benefits of high-efficiency and high-production agriculture.

New and improved glyphosate-resistant (GR) crops continue to be rapidly developed. These crops confer greater crop safety to multiple glyphosate applications, higher rates, and wider application timings. Many of these crops will also have glyphosate resistance stacked with traits that confer resistance to herbicides with other modes of actions to expand the utility of existing herbicides and to increase the number of mixture options that can delay the evolution of GR weeds. Some breeding stacks of herbicide resistance traits are currently available, but the trend in the future will be to combine resistance genes in molecular stacks. The first example of such a molecular stack has a new metabolically based mechanism to inactivate glyphosate combined with an active site-based resistance for herbicides that inhibit acetolactate synthase (ALS). This stack confers resistance to glyphosate and all five classes of ALS-inhibiting herbicides. Other molecular stacks will include glyphosate resistance with resistance to auxin herbicides and herbicides that inhibit acetyl coenzyme A carboxylase (ACCase) and 4-hydroxyphenyl pyruvate dioxygenase (HPPD). Scientists are also studying a number of other herbicide resistance transgenes. Some of these new transgenes will be used to make new multiple herbicide-resistant crops that offer growers more herbicide options to meet their changing weed management needs and to help sustain the efficacy of glyphosate.

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