All are food resources in demand by the county's dairy industry as well as for sale on the nation's commodity markets. Research is underway to control important pests of these crops to maintain production and increase their profitability. Purple and yellow nutsedge are important and hard to control weeds in alfalfa. Trials have evaluated the efficacy of a newly-registered herbicide, shown to be easier to apply than the standard material. By itself, however, it is not a complete solution to controlling these weeds in alfalfa and subsequent crops.
Black nightshade is a problem in blackeye beans and cowpeas.
Not only does it compete with the crop for water and sunlight, it reduces the quality of the harvested crop because nightshade berries stain the blackeye beans purple during threshing. It is a hard weed to control in late season because effective herbicides applied at planting don't provide season-long protection. In the pest department, leafminer is a new and sporadic, yet serious, pest of blackeyes. Effective materials have been identified for controlling this insect. One of them, a reduced-risk material, had a Section 18 usage label in 1999 and is now fully registered for use in California.