A History of Weed Science at NDSU

Retiring Messersmith, Dexter close the book on their chapters at NDSU this year

Clare B. Waldron, a botanist, was the first staff member of the newly formed North Dakota Agricultural College, hired to collect and classify grasses, plants, and soils of North Dakota. He arrived on July 19, 1890, and for the next three months was the only staff member of the college or experiment station.

Alan Dexter Calvin Messersmith

Agricultural research has been a constant at now North Dakota State University ever since, and with it, a constant campaign in the war on weeds.

NDSU’s weed science program indeed has a strong and successful history. Two long-time faculty members who have made major contributions to that effort are retiring in 2007 – Calvin Messersmith, who has taught weed science classes since 1966, and Alan Dexter, extension sugarbeet weed control specialist for both NDSU and the University of Minnesota since 1969.

Weeds take up as much time and effort as anything in agriculture, says Messersmith. “Agriculture continues as a controversy with weeds, which sustains employment security for many of us,” he quips.

Over the years a persistent weed problem has been wild mustard, whose bright yellow flowers make it very apparent when control efforts have been ineffective.

He quotes from The Checkered Years by Mary Dodge Woodward, a diary of life on a Red River Valley Bonanza farm in the 1880s:

The fields are too wet to pull mustard which worries Walter. The men dislike weeding more than any other work; nevertheless, they have pulled all the mustard on this farm every year we have been here.

Messersmith notes that weed science – making weed control more effective and less drudgery – was part of research and teaching efforts from the earliest days of North Dakota Agricultural College.

He notes that an early prospectus of NDAC announced that one of the early faculty members, H.L. Bolley, would lecture on “Weeds; Nature and Distribution.” The first regular catalog issued in May 1892 listed a course on “Weeds and Their Distribution” offered to second year students.

Bolley also conducted research on weed control.  NDAC Experiment Station Bulletin No. 80, published in 1908, included a section on “Discovery of selective weed control – 1896” titled “Weed Destruction or Control by Means of Chemical Sprays.” The target weed was wild mustard and the chemical used was mercury dicholoride.

Bolley is thought to be the first to publish research on selective weed control. He was at least one of the first three, as concurrent discoveries in France and Germany were published in 1886.

Outreach has been just as important in the war on weeds as research. Take 1951 for example, when then NDAC surveyed farmers in 10 N.D. counties regarding an increasing weed threat, a weed called leafy spurge. Thirty percent of the farmers in that survey were concerned that leafy spurge was taking over their farms, another 40% did not think the weed was a serious threat, and the remaining 30% were unaware of the weed.

Two years later, the North Dakota Cooperative Extension Service began a statewide leafy spurge control demonstration program. There were 51 leafy spurge control demonstrations in 39 counties and demonstrations in two counties for creeping jenny (field bindweed).  Most of the chemicals for the demonstrations were furnished free of charge by Lyon Chemicals (sodium chlorate), Pacific Coast Borax (polybor chlorate and sodium tetraborate/Borascu), and E. I. duPont de Nemours (ammonium sulfamate/Ammate and monuron/CMU). A relatively new herbicide was also included in the demonstrations  at 0.75 and 1.5 pounds per acre, a chemistry called 2,4-D ester.

Through the 1950s weed research at NDAC was primarily in the botany department, under Professor O.A. Stevens, along with E.A. Helgeson.  Bolley and L.R. Waldron also made contributions from the agriculture faculty.

Weed science research was transferred to the agronomy department in 1962, when John Nalewaja joined the faculty as the first weed scientist. He was followed in 1963 by Larry Mitich, as the first extension weed control specialist. 

Alan Dexter followed as extension sugarbeet weed control specialist in 1969.  His was a unique position, a split appointment between NDSU and the University of Minnesota. Operating support came from a check-off from sugarbeet growers and various grants.  He became a leading expert in weed control and herbicide use in sugarbeets in North America.

Current faculty who focus on weeds at NDSU include extension weed specialist Richard Zollinger, Kirk Howatt in small grains and minor crops, Micheal Chrisoffers in weed genetics, Brian Jenks as a research specialist at the North Central Research Extension Center, and Harlend Hatterman-Valenti in high value crops.

Oh, How Weed Control Technology Has Changed!

Henry Luke Bolley was one of the first educators and researchers of weed science at North Dakota State University, and is thought to be among the first – globally – to publish research on selective weed control.

The following photos of an early weed control field demonstration and a weed sprayer treatment over cereal grains are from the papers of H.L. Bolley, courtesy of University Archives, North Dakota State University, Michael J. Robinson, Archivist.

The photo descriptions are written by H.L. Bolley.

H.L. Bolley: “In the spring and summer of 1907 extensive demonstrations were put on by myself, Mr. Prichard and others at Fargo on the college farm; at Mapleton on the Twitchell farm; at St. Thomas on the Ed. And John O’Conner farm….”  “Mixing station at St. Thomas. Farmers came to all of these demonstrations and were highly interested in the work. Machines most highly efficient for the destruction of the weeds were a centrifugal sprayer in which the water ran out into a rapidly revolving disk, two discs covering an area approximately one rod wide.”

H.L. Bolley: “The arostook pressure sprayer was a type of pressure sprayer that threw a proper type of spray and was very effective in action at the Buchanan farm, St. Thomas, especially upon mustard, kinghead and Canada Thistle.”