Recruit the plant pathogen for weed management: Bioherbicide a sustainable strategy

Abstract

Innovative and sustainable methods of pathogen controls are the paramount in modern-day integrated disease management (IDM) approaches. Weeds, although representing the diversity of habitat, provide many ecological services, but at the same time, they are problematic and produce intense competition for our crops or other economic plants. Herbicides are largely being utilized for their control with some known advantages and disadvantages as well. Bioherbicides are the biological agent that utilizes for control of weeds. In present chapter, different attributes of bioherbicides like their basic terminology, advantages and disadvantages, approaches for combining them with other management tools, their implementation at field level, prior steps for research and product development, present status, market, attributes of some marketed products, types of their formulations, factors affecting efficacy of bioherbicides, and their mode of actions were discussed. Further weed management by means of utilization of biological agents was gauge through land use vise, viz., croplands, pasture/grazing lands, and water bodies. Frequency distribution analysis of such weed biological agent was carried out for the first time.