Professor Kingsley Dixon and his team discovered
that smoke can encourage both weeds and
native plants to grow.

Imagine if you could force every weed in your garden to germinate at exactly the same time, so rather than wage a war with them all year round you could kill them off all at once.

The technology to artificially stimulate germination has been developed in Perth and, although the implications for home gardeners are exciting, the benefits to commercial and agricultural industries are enormous.

“It has taken 14 years of investigation, but the discovery is, we believe good news for everyone,” says Kingsley Dixon, director of science at Kings Park and Botanic Garden and University of Western Australia professor of plant biology.

His team of scientists and collaborators have isolated the one chemical in smoke which will help speed up the revegetation of mined land, accelerate the recovery of fire ravaged vegetation and boost farmers’ battles with the weeds taking over their fields.

The chemical called karrikinolide in honour of the Nyoongar people who have always used smoke’ therapy’ in the landscape (karrikin being Nyoongar for smoke) can be derived from burning any plant material. Amazingly, it has the ability to ‘awaken’ even the most difficult seeds and get them to germinate.

Professor Dixon said while plant derived smoke already achieved a 48-55 fold increase in germination even in post mine site conditions, knowing the isolated chemical will make the process more cost effective and achieve vastly improved biodiversity.

“This presents the resources industries, particularly in a biodiverse region like Western Australia, with the most outstanding opportunity to reduce their carbon footprints,” he said.

“Manufacturing an artificial version of the chemical could be used world wide to speed up the recovery of fire-ravaged vegetation and the restoration of land damaged by mining.

What Professor Dixon’s team didn’t expect to discover was that the molecule also triggers germination of plants that rarely or never experience fire, including some important agricultural weeds.

“This opens up the prospect of using karrikinolide to make weed seeds sprout before a crop is planted, so farmers use a knockdown herbicide without affecting productivity. The University of Western Australia are now attempting to unlock the potential of the chemical for agriculture,” he said.

“The research has shown in some of Australia’s most noxious farming weeds, such as wild turnip and wild oats, up to 70 per cent of the seeds can be induced to germinate at rates equivalent to just 1g of active agent per hectare.”

“The next challenge was to find the single chemical out of the estimated 4040 in smoke responsible for this awakening of seeds and develop a solution of the chemical to soak seeds or treat in the soil that can be used by anyone, even the common household gardener who is tired of weeding.”

Professor Dixon and his research team’s project and that of collaborating scientists at UWA and Murdoch University are now investigating commercial options so industry, members of the public and the environment can start benefiting from their discovery.