Agronomy and Horticulture Department
Herbicide Discovery and Screening
Date of this Version
2008
Document Type
Article
Citation
Plant and Soil Sciences eLibrary (PASSeL) Lesson
Abstract
Overview
Historically, herbicides have been discovered by randomly screening collections of chemicals for activity on target weeds. While totally empirical, this approach has been surprisingly successful and has produced essentially all commercial herbicides currently in use. More recently, agrichemical companies have adopted directed strategies using in vitro assays, compound structure/activity relationships, and profiling assays of mRNAs, proteins, and metabolites. These latter approaches, in combination with high-throughput screens, are designed to exploit recent advances in technology and take advantage of our increased understanding of biological systems.
Objectives
At the completion of the lesson, students will be able to:
- Describe the history of herbicide discovery and development.
- Describe newer techniques currently used to discover and screen herbicides.
- Understand the advantages and disadvantages of the currently used methodologies.
Modules:
Comments
Copyright © 2008 William E. Dyer. Used by permission.
JNRLSE approved 2008
This project was supported in part by the National Research Initiative Competitive Grants CAP project 2011-68002-30029 from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, administered by the University of California-Davis and by the National Science Foundation (NSF), Division of Undergraduate Education, National SMETE Digital Library Program, Award #0938034, administered by the University of Nebraska. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the USDA or NSF.
Development of this lesson was supported in part by the Montana Agricultural Experiment Station, Montana State University, and the Western Society of Weed Science.