About me

Hello! My name is Huong Nguyen. I am an Assistant Professor of Weed Biology and Integrated Weed Management at McGill University Macdonald Campus. I earned my Ph.D. in Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University with Dr. Matt Liebman. Before joining McGill, I held postdoctoral positions at Cornell University, focusing on cover crops in organic systems, and at the Rodale Institute, where I worked on perennial cropping systems.

In Vietnam, where I grew up, weeds (or wild plants) are widely used as additional animal feedstock, homeopathic remedies for common illnesses, and in traditional beauty products. Seeing how weeds are conventionally managed in the United States was shocking when I first came to graduate school. My graduate research focused on the effects of cropping system diversification on common waterhemp control in an integrated pest management context. Common waterhemp is a noxious weed species found throughout Midwestern croplands that thrives, competes with crops, produces many seeds, and maintains a persistent soil seedbank that insures recurring infestations. My primary goal was to identify sustainable practices to deplete waterhemp’s soil seedbank while not compromising crop yields and environmental quality. One cropping system in our experiment was a four-year rotation in the following sequence: corn-soybean-oat interseeded with alfalfa – alfalfa. The alfalfa that was interseeded with oat in the third year was maintained over winter to the fourth year of the rotation. The weed management and cropping system diversification strategies were ecologically driven, considering natural resource availability and potential markets for the added crops. Oat and alfalfa exude allelopathic chemicals against weed seedlings. Interseeding alfalfa with oat in the third year of the rotation reduces the soil disturbance frequency, and the alfalfa hosts beneficial insects over winter. My preliminary model suggested that the waterhemp seedbank density is declining the fastest in one of the diversified cropping systems while using 60% less herbicide than in the conventional system. Crop yields in the more diverse rotations were higher than those in the baseline system. The 4-year system’s sustainability is improved as the total amount of herbicide’s active ingredient is reduced by 80%, significantly reducing freshwater toxicity load and greenhouse gas emissions. Higher weed seedbank diversity and richness in the 4-year rotation are coincident with improved cropping system sustainability.

At McGill, I focus on Integrated Weed Management solutions that reduce external inputs while balancing ecosystem services of agricultural systems. Specifically, my interests are in the following topics.

• Integrated Weed Management and Herbicide Resistance: developing strategies in multiple cropping systems at various scales (conventional, low-input, organic, etc.) to manage weeds effectively in terms of abundance and herbicide resistance profile
• Climate Change, Weed Community and Population Dynamics, and Agroecological Resilience: investigating the impact of climate change on weed abundance and species distribution, with a focus on implications for agroecological system resilience
• Ethnobotany of Weeds: exploring traditional and modern uses of agricultural weeds, identifying potential applications in biocontrol of insect pests, culinary, herbal medicine, and other applications
• Socio-Economic Aspects and Multi-Stakeholder Participatory Research: disentangling the socio-economic impacts of weeds and the availability of weed management programs as well as engaging diverse stakeholders to develop practical and sustainable weed management strategies
• Science Communication and Policy Implication: advocating for evidence-based policies and developing initiatives to effectively communicate complex scientific insights to policymakers and stakeholders