Technique for Separating Weed Seed from Soil

Abstract

A simple technique is described for rapid determination of weed seed, rhizome, corm, or bulb populations in soil. Soil samples were placed in nylon mesh bags. The soil was washed from the bags by machine leaving only a small residue including the desired propagules. These were hand separated and the soil population of a given plant species calculated. The total manipulation time per sample was approximately 10 min.