Allelopathy in ecological agriculture

Abstract

Modern agriculture is exploitive of growth resources and has caused various problems such as a environmental pollution through (a) contamination of underground drinking water resources, food and fodder with pesticides and nitrates, which is harmful to farm workers and livestock, (b) poor soil health leading to low soil productivity and (c) poor quality of life. These problems may be overcome with the adoption of Ecological Agricultural practices. The definition of Ecological Agriculture used in this chapter is ``Ecological Agriculture consists of those practices, which reduces the use of outside inputs on farm. Therefore, various types of allelopathic strategies may be used for (a) maintenance of soil fertility (use of crop rotations, BNF, crop mixtures, crop residues and leaf litter etc.), (b) weed management (cover crops, crop residues as mulches, intercropping, crop rotations, phytotoxic or allelopathic varieties and natural herbicides etc.), (c) insects pests management (cropping systems, resistant varieties, insecticidal allelochemicals etc.), (d) nematodes management (plant materials, oilseed cakes, nematicidal compounds etc.), (e) diseases management (cropping systems, crop residues, organic amendments etc.) and (f) allelochemicals as growth regulators. Therefore, research efforts are needed to utilise inhibitory allelopathic effects of plants for natural control of crop pests and diseases, so that use of present pesticides could be minimised for keeping the environment clean for our future generations.