Weed Control Advisor is an Expert System software development project, and is designed to help Texas rice producers with their weed control decisions throughout the year. Weed Control Advisor includes twenty-three of the most important weeds in Texas rice production and considers twelve herbicide varieties and some of their combined use.

In order to give any recommendation to the rice producer/user, Weed Control Advisor demands some input and the most important of them is the name of the problem weeds and their sizes. Besides this information, Weed Control Advisor is able to work with the pre-set default values of water management method, rice production stage, previous herbicide use and several environmental conditions if the user chooses not to modify them. The program user can save any data he/she has entered in a special file called "Field Database". This file can be retrieved and/or modified during another session if weed and/or field conditions change and a new recommendation is required.

The logic behind any recommendation relies on the effectiveness of individual herbicides on different weeds at different sizes. An effectiveness table for each herbicide, which includes contact and residual effect values for each weed at different sizes and rates for different soil texture, is stored in a database within the program. The same database also stores application information, warnings, application rates and working mechanism for each herbicide as well as the reasoning when a particular herbicide is not recommended.

When problem weeds and other field information is provided by the rice producer/user, Weed Control Advisor scans every herbicide effectiveness table to find the possible effective herbicides to recommend the user. Once the herbicides are selected, the next step is to check previous herbicide use to avoid herbicide usage over the legal limit.

If any herbicide is still recommendable, the last step includes scanning the recommendation rules per selected herbicide. The rules vary for each herbicide, and are generally related with rice stage, water management method, soil condition, growing conditions, etc. The following table summarizes the unfavorable field conditions when some herbicides are not recommendable or when some warnings are associated with the recommendation.

Weed Complex of Weed Control Advisor

Other Common Names

Common Name

Trade name

molinate

Ordram 8E^®

molinate

Ordram 15G^®

thiobencarb

Bolero 8E^®

propanil

several

bentazon

Basagran

2, 4 - D

several

MCPA

several

acifluorfen

Blazer^®

fenoxaprop

Whip^®

pendimethalin

Prowl^®

Londax^®

Londax^®

Facet^®

Facet^®

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