Abstract
In the face of yield losses caused by weeds, especially in low-input agricultural systems, and environmental pollution due to the excessive use of synthetic herbicides, sustainable weed management has become mandatory. To address these issues, allelopathy, i.e., the biochemical phenomenon of chemical interactions between plants through the release of secondary metabolites into the environment, is gaining popularity. Although many important crops are known for their allelopathic potential, farmers are still reluctant to use such knowledge practically. It is therefore important to assist advisors and farmers in assessing whether allelopathy can be effectively implemented into an eco-friendly weed management strategy. Here, we aim to give a comprehensive and updated review on the herbicidal potential of allelopathy. The major findings are the following: (1) Crops from different botanical families show allelopathic properties and can be cultivated alone or in combination with other non-allelopathic crops. (2) Many allelopathic tools can be adopted (crop rotation, intercropping, cover cropping as living or dead mulches, green manuring, use of allelochemical-based bioherbicides). (3) These methods are highly flexible and feature increased efficiency when combined into an integrated weed management strategy. (4) Recent advances in the chemistry of allelopathy are facilitating the use of allelochemicals for bioherbicide production. (5) Several biotechnologies, such as stress induction and genetic engineering techniques, can enhance the allelopathic potential of crops or introduce allelopathic traits de novo. This review shows how important the role of allelopathy for sustainable weed management is and, at the same time, indicates the need for field experiments, mainly under an integrated approach. Finally, we recommend the combination of transgenic allelopathy with the aforementioned allelopathic tools to increase the weed-suppressive efficacy of allelopathy.
Highlights
This review shows how important the role of allelopathy for sustainable weed management is and, at the same time, indicates the need for field experiments, mainly under an integrated approach
Trifolium subterraneum green manuring was more effective than dead mulching in decreasing the size of the soil weed seedbank, both have significantly reduced it compared to spontaneous flora cover cropping and conventional apricot management
Investigating the weed-suppressive capacity of different cover crops cultivated for green manure in a 6-year field experiment, Masilionyte et al [84] found that white mustard
Summary
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Allelochemicals, i.e., the defensive secondary metabolites involved in the allelopathic interactions, can have negative effects on conspecific (autoallelopathy or autotoxicity) and/or heterospecific species (heterotoxicity) They encompass a very wide range of chemical classes, the most representative of which are phenolic compounds (simple phenols, flavonoids, quinones, coumarins, etc.), terpenoids (mono-, di- and triterpenes, sesquiterpenes and steroids) and compounds containing a nitrogen atom (e.g., benzoxazinoids) [5]. Only the detrimental effects of allelopathy and the plant–plant interactions will be considered, with special reference to crop–crop and weed–crop allelopathic interference. Even in this case, there is a large literature on how allelopathy could be exploited for weed control [8,9]. The goal of the review is to find new possible applicative solutions in the allelopathy field by using the acquired knowledge to make weed management more sustainable
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