Ecological Management of Weeds in Desert Regions

Abstract

Cultivations under the deficiency of water, heat, and solar stresses are the main human activities in desert lands. In these agriculture, all forces should be managed to improve crop productivity, minimize inputs and minimize environmental impact. A lot of consideration governance the choice of pest management practices especially weeds control based on possibilities, limitations, applicability, effectiveness, and ecological sustainability in both agriculture and non-agriculture lands. Whereas, there were abilities of weeds to adapt to many stresses in the desert regions than crop plants. Ecological weeds management required knowledge of ecology and biology to design an unsuitable environment for weeds to grow in the infested lands. It was important to follow in non-cultivated lands and involved in the suitable integrated weed tactics for an effective control in cultivated croplands. Ecological weed control can be achieved by applying good agricultural practices including suitable weed control practices; weed prevention, seedbed preparations, mulches, hand weeding, hoeing, crop rotation, cover cropping, mowing, soil solarization, and competitive crop varieties to increase biodiversity and decrease desertification: Finally, ecological weed management is functional in a desert region for food production, restore degraded arable lands, ecological maintenance, biodiversity conservation, land conservation and prevents desertification as well as sustain the natural desert resources. This chapter presented many weed management suitable activities have an acceptable level fit to modern agriculture and desert environments which accommodate the need to conserve resources and increasing crop productivity.