🌿 Weed
ANX-WEED-0000252
Barnyard Grass
Echinochloa crus-galli
Barnyard Grass (Echinochloa crus-galli), an annual grass weed of the Poaceae family.
- Family
- Poaceae
- Growth habit
- Grass
- Life cycle
- Annual
- Invasive status
- Naturalized, widespread
- Native region
- Eurasia, now a cosmopolitan weed of wet agriculture worldwide.
- Reproduction
- Seed - a heavy seeder that closely mimics young rice seedlings, making early identification difficult.
Environment
Habitat & Growing Conditions
- Habitat
- Rice paddies, irrigated fields, wet or disturbed ground.
- Climate requirements
- Warm season grass; thrives in hot, wet conditions.
- Soil types
- Prefers moist to waterlogged soils, especially flooded rice fields.
Impact
Crops Affected & Economic Impact
- Affected crops
- Rice (its single most damaging weed globally), maize, sugarcane, soybean
- Competition impact
- In rice, heavy infestations can cause yield losses of 40-80% by out-competing seedlings for light and nutrients in flooded conditions.
- Economic impact
- Widely regarded as the world's most economically damaging weed of rice.
Management
Control Methods
- Control methods
- Water management (flooding depth) in rice, stale seedbeds, and rotation with dryland crops.
- Organic control
- Hand weeding, mechanical weeders in rice paddies, and maintaining a deep flood layer to suppress germination.
- Chemical control
- Pre- and post-emergent grass herbicides used in rice systems; resistance to several herbicide classes has been documented in long-cropped rice areas.