Guelph researchers want to know what you think is Ontario's worst weed

Friday, January 29, 2016

by SUSAN MANN

Researchers at the University of Guelph’s Ridgetown Campus want to know what weed you think is Ontario’s worst one.

The survey, posted a month ago, is open until July, says Dave Bilyea, horticulture weed science research technician with the university’s Ridgetown Campus. The posters announcing the survey have a QR code so people can log in with their cell phone to do it. The survey is also available online.

“It’s an opinion poll,” Bilyea says. “It is people’s perception of what they believe is their worst weed. Is it real? No, it’s all perception.”

That perception will vary by region. “What we see in Chatham-Kent is not what they’re going to see in the Ottawa Valley so it (the survey) is tracking all that,” he says.

The survey also has a spot for people to input their own ideas if the weed that bothers them the most isn’t on the list of almost 40 weeds included in the poll, he notes.

Bilyea says he plans to present the results at Diagnostic Days, July 6-7, at the Ridgetown Campus.

So far, Canada fleabane is leading the poll. “It’s only because a lot of people, in the last couple of years, have really been fighting it so it’s definitely on their minds,” he notes.

There have been 170 responses to the poll so far, and Bilyea says he’d like to get 300 to 400 or more. The survey takes less than two minutes to complete. Grower and non-growers, such as agronomists or others involved in agriculture but not actively farming, can participate.

The poll was also done seven years ago. “It was a good snapshot of what was going on,” he notes. “Some of the results that came out were interesting. We found that in some places quack grass was still pretty high, which surprised us a little bit.”

The responses were surprising, Bilyea says, because genetically modified crops were already being used, “and my personal opinion is that probably there was some misidentification there. It may not have been quack grass, but it’s the first grass that came to mind for a lot of people.” BF