The Barnyard Grass Understanding and Management (BYGUM) tool provides new ways to look at the economics of summer weed control in Australian cotton/grains systems.
This weed management scenario testing tool combines biological, agronomic and economic factors to examine the economics of current summer grass management strategies, and compare with new tactics – perhaps what your neighbours are doing, what your agronomist recommends, or new ideas from elsewhere.
BYGUM lets you test changes in crop prices, rotations, weed management costs, herbicide availability or efficacy, and more. It is free to download, use, and share, and all you need is a copy of Microsoft Excel, preferably on a Windows computer (BYGUM does run on many Mac systems but won’t run on an iPad or Android device at present). BYGUM is designed to be simple to use but with powerful possibilities for planning and learning about summer weed management.
The tool aims to evaluate the profitability of barnyard grass control strategies in Australian cotton cropping, in three simple steps:
- Define your paddock
- Build your strategy
- Compare your results.
BYGUM was developed by Innokas Intellectual Services, with support from CRDC, GRDC, the WA Department of Agriculture and Food, the University of Western Australia, and the Australian Herbicide Resistance Initiative.
BYGUM developer David Thornby has developed a series of scenarios to demonstrate this new decision support tool, which were featured in the winter 2017 edition of CRDC's Spotlight magazine.
View the BYGUM quick start guide
