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Abstract
Humans have been attempting to control agricultural insect, plant, and disease pests for thousands of years. Significant progress has been made over the past century in pest control due to the advancement of agricultural techniques and synthetic pesticides. However, over-reliance on pesticides to maintain pest populations below economic levels has led to chemical pesticide resistance in organisms. Reduced levels of pesticide control have led to the development of new pest control strategies. Due to the extensive reliance on a single herbicide tactic, herbicide resistance has developed in numerous weed species worldwide, causing devastating losses in crop yields. Developing more diverse management strategies that do not revolve around herbicide reliance will be beneficial for current and future agricultural practices.
The following document was written after conducting two, three month summer internships with Dow AgroSciences as a research and development field assistant. My primary objectives included assisting in trial plot design, applying treatments, and data collection and analysis. One objective of my second internship was to study the tolerance of soybean to a variety of postemergence herbicides in the chloroacetamide chemical family. The results from this trial are included in Chapter 2 and document the impact of product selection and use rate on injury to soybean.
