Acknowledgement

This research on common sowthistle was part of the projects ‘Biocontrol solutions for sustainable management of weed impacts to agricultural profitability’ (2016-2020) and ‘Underpinning agricultural productivity and biosecurity by weed biological control‘ (2019-2022), led by AgriFutures Australia (the trading name of the Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation (RIRDC)). These projects have been supported by funding from the Australian Government Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment as part of its Rural R&D for Profit programme. The Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC) and US Department of Agriculture are also acknowledged for their financial support.

Contributors to this project were:

CSIRO: Gavin Hunter, Kylie Ireland (former employee), Louise Morin, Michelle Rafter, Raghu Sathyamurthy, Kumaran Nagalingam, Thierry Thomann, Mireille Jourdan, Vincent Lesieur, Darren Kriticos, Noboru Ota, Linda Broadhurst, Jessica Bovill (former employee), Francisco Encinas-Viso, John Lester, Patrick Gleeson, Gio Fichera, Andrew White, Tim Vance, Caroline Delaisse, Isabel Zeil-Rolfe, Andy Sheppard.

Overseas collaborators: Melodie Ollivier, Marie-Stephane Tixier, Jean-Francois Martin.

Thanks to all collaborators who kindly made collections of the weed for the genetic characterisation study and to Tom North, Curator of the National Seed Bank at the Australian National Botanic Gardens, and Graeme Errington, Seedbank Curator of the Australian PlantBank at the Australian Botanic Gardens Mt. Annan, who supplied seed of some of the Australian native plant species for host-specificity testing.