Arable field margin management techniques to enhance biodiversity and control Barren Brome Anisantha sterilis

This experiment set out to examine which, if any, practical management regimes applied to land taken out of arable cropping are most effective in enhancing biodiversity whilst controlling the pernicious weed barren Brome Anisantha sterilis. Of seven treatments, six comprised a sown, species-rich mixture of native grasses and forbs, and one was left to regenerate naturally. Five of the sown treatments were oversown with A. sterilis to examine the role of this aggressive weed in preventing the establishment of sown species. Under various cutting regimes, the abundance of individual sown species was variable in year 1, but increased and converged by year 3. The exception was the treatment to which fertiliser was added, in which coarse grasses including A. sterilis were abundant, and the establishment of sown species correspondingly poor. At one of the sites examined, establishment appeared to be enhanced by the spring application of graminicide at a sufficiently low rate to control A. sterilis whilst remaining sub-lethal to finer-leaved sown grasses. The natural regeneration plots, in which naturally-occurring A. sterilis was present in all three years, had many fewer plant species than those sown with native seed mixtures.