The science behind dicamba: What you need to know

By: Dr. Andrea Basche, Assistant Professor, Department of Agronomy and Horticulture

In 2017, soybean and cotton varieties engineered with resistance to the chemical dicamba were grown widely across the U.S. for the first time. The new crop varieties were introduced to farmers to manage weeds that had previously been very pesky to their main cash crops.

What’s so special about these new seeds? They allow farmers to spray herbicides containing dicamba after planting, without harming cotton or soybean while also killing the surrounding weeds. While many farmers were excited to have access to this new technology, issues arose: reports of off-target movement began to pop up, damaging native plants and crops not resistant to dicamba.

This post barely scratches the surface of the dicamba debate. University of Nebraska-Lincoln undergraduate students in  Dr. Andrea Basche’s class developed blog posts to more richly explore the science behind dicamba.

In the coming weeks, we will share some of the students’ blogs.  This is a great example of how science classes can work with Streaming Science for science communication projects!

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