Challenges and opportunities in weed management under a changing agricultural scenario

Abstract

Weed control is perhaps the earliest intervention made by human beings for increasing crop production in the history of agricultural development. With time, the principle of weed control expanded from its physical mode to cultural methods, and then the inventions of selective herbicides during mid-twentieth century initiated a new era of weeding measure in the agricultural crop fields. The economic and environmental concerns subsequently caused a shift in the focus from mere weed control to concepts of weed management. The never-ceasing demand for higher crop yield for fulfilling the need of an ever-increasing human population, global climate change, increase in international trade of agricultural produce, introduction of genetically modified crops, and greater emphasis on conservation agriculture are some of the challenges expected to redefine the agricultural production systems across the geopolitical boundaries. Weed management, being an integral part of crop production system, and also being one of the major contributors toward production costs as well as produce quality, must be resilient enough to cope with the requirements of highly variable emerging agricultural scenarios across diverse agroclimatic situations, to make the future agricultural production systems economically sustainable. On the other hand, increased environmental concerns, development of herbicide resistance in weeds, weed flora shift, and stringent quarantine laws are some other hurdles the weed scientists will have to address while developing weed management package of practices. Integrated approaches involving site-specific weed management using precise delivery techniques, controlled release formulations of herbicides, and weed competitive crop cultivars with allelopathic potentials are some of the possibilities that need comprehensive exploration.