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[Michaelangelica]

Sugar again

The trick now is to work out the simplest ways to get native grasses into weed dominated sites and which combination of native grasses best control weeds.”

In previous trials, the researchers found applying sugar was very successful in helping establish Kangaroo Grass as the sugar reduced the soil nutrients available to competing exotic weeds. The sugar fed soil micro-organisms which absorbed lots of soil nutrients as they grew and so the weed species were 'starved.'

“We used sugar as a tool to find out what the real problem was in getting native grasses to re-establish – this was the interaction between weeds and nutrients,” says Dr Prober. “Now we are working out ways to overcome the problem. In particular, if the native grasses we reintroduce really do take up the nutrients over the long term, then that's a sustainable solution. Sugar is just one way of achieving this outcome.”

A little sugar could restore natives*(ScienceAlert)