AFTER a 35-year career in the world of weeds, Hugh Beckie credits his four years as director or the Australian Herbicide Resistance Initiative (AHRI) as the "feather in my cap"
Originally from Canada, Dr Beckie moved to Western Australia in 2018 to take the helm of AHRI, a role which he officially retired from today, marking the end of his illustrious career in herbicide resistance.
He said it was nothing short of an honour to have had the privilege to serve as director.
"AHRI had a worldwide reputation in terms of being a centre of excellence for herbicide resistance and having been in that field for all of my career it was a natural evaluation to make it there," Dr Beckie said.
"The initiative was established 20 years ago and moving forward I'm sure it will still be going strong 20 year from now."
AHRI's mantra is simple - more crop, fewer weeds, sustainably.
Under his leadership, that mantra has been tackled through diverse research, with Dr Beckie highlighting three key achievements in his time as director.
Resistance testing service
Dr Beckie established the first resistance testing service in Canada in 1995, something he viewed as a top priority when he became AHRI director.
While Mechelle Owen had led large-scale random resistance surveys in WA for more than 20 years, AHRI had never offered a commercial, targeted resistance testing service.
With Dr Beckie's support, Roberto Busi took resistance testing to a new level, offering more than 20 herbicides and herbicide mixes in his testing service.
His team tests more than 500 samples every year, with the hope that herbicide resistance testing will become as common as soil testing.
Understanding resistance at a molecular level
Knowing the enemy is a key part of any battle strategy and AHRI leads the world in discovering and understanding resistance mechanisms and the genes involved.
This is high-level science and AHRI researchers Qin Yu, Heping Han and Danica Goggin are known across the globe for their work.
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Their work on understanding the genes involved in P450's role in resistance is a great example and AHRI research is leading the world in this area.
"By understanding why something becomes resistant, we can better get a management strategy in place," Dr Beckie said.
World-leading communication
AHRI had always been passionate about extension and communication and continued to prioritise these activities under Dr Beckie's leadership.
He believes there is no point in doing research if people don't know about it.
"We spend a lot of money in our budget on communications, in conjunction with our partners," he said.
"Being able to get the message out, not just to growers but all of our stakeholders, about the work we're doing is critical as we need to show the progress we're making."
While they may be his most notable achievements at AHRI, Dr Beckie's crowning glory as a researcher in terms of impact on the herbicide resistance field came three decades ago.
In 1990 he published a paper showing herbicide mixtures were better than herbicide rotations in both delaying and managing resistance.
"From that paper, the adoption of herbicide mixtures by growers as a way to manage increasingly complex patterns of resistance has become standard," Dr Beckie said.
"From a scientific point of view, that has been my most significant contribution."
Having grown up on a grain farm in Saskatchewan, Canada, Dr Beckie had farmed part-time throughout his life and he still has land there.
Now retired, he plans to help out on the farm and get his hands dirty.
"I'll do what I'm told and I'll enjoy every minute of it," he said.
"My decision to retire came down to family considerations - my wife has been retired from teaching for a few years and they needed me back in Canada more than AHRI needed me here."
Having spent 35 years in the herbicide resistance field, Dr Beckie was fortunate to be involved in the first case of weed resistance in west ern Canada.
Over his career he has seen a lot and now he is amazed by young scientists around the world, particularly at AHRI, and how well they're tackling various issues.
"We have a great team at AHRI and I am very proud that I have been able to keep that team together despite financial challenges," he said.
"They have done all of the hard work and I've just orchestrated and facilitated that by keeping them on the same page.
"The field is in incredible hands going forward."