CENTRAL ILLINOIS (WCIA) -- For Christmas, farmers would like something that would kill weeds because weeds are winning when they take the field.

Stu Ellis caught up with Illinois weed researcher Dean Riechers who said farmers should test for resistance on their fields. Spraying herbicides on the fields is a good way to test them, or farmers could also take leaf samples and send them into labs like at the University of Illinois for analysis.

Riechers said farmers are getting to the point where each field's population has to be diagnosed and tested for which herbicides do and don't work. It takes more time and effort to do so, but he thinks the weed problem has gotten to that point now.