Comparison of Various Sampling Methodologies for Site Specific Sterile Wild Oat (avena Sterilis) Management

The ability to manage weed infestations in a spatially precise manner will rely on the availability of efficient methods of mapping weed distributions. We have conducted a study designed to compare four different ground based methods for collecting georeferenced information on sterile wild oat infestation in a winter barley crop. Sampling was done at harvest time (when wild oat panicles are most visible) by scoring panicle density, either from the ground or from a combine, by counting panicle contacts by an observer walking through field transects or by sampling wild oat seed rain on the ground. Although the four methods tested provided similar descriptions of the spatial distribution of this weed, they differed in their costs (considering both, the cost of sampling and the cost of wrong decissions). Defining the location of weed patches from the combine appears to be a relatively cheap and reliable method for the creation of weed management maps to be used in the following season.