Eco-friendly weed control options for sustainable agriculture- A review

Abstract

Weeds are unwanted plants playing a very important role in different eco-systems and many of them cause enormous direct and indirect losses. The losses include interference with cultivation of crops, loss of bio-diversity, loss of potentially productive lands, loss of grazing areas and livestock production, erosion following fires in heavily invaded areas, choking of navigational and irrigation canals and reduction of available water in water bodies. As the weed cause nearly 45 % of the total loss, every attempt has to be made to contain the weed menace and uphold the production. Weed management takes away nearly one third of total cost of production of field crops. In India, the manual method of weed control is quite popular and effective. Of late, labour has become non-availability and costly, due to intensification, diversification of agriculture and urbanization. The usage of herbicides in India and elsewhere in the world is increasing due to possible benefits to farmers and continuous use of the same group of herbicides over a period of time on a same piece of land leads to ecological imbalance in terms of weed shift and environmental pollution. The complexity of these situations has resulted in a need to develop a wholistic sustainable eco-friendly weed management programme throughout the farming period. Sustainable development is the management and conservation of the natural resource base and the orientation of technological and institutional change in such a manner as to ensure the attainment and continued satisfaction of human needs for present and future generations. Sustainable weed management is the use of weed control methods that are socially acceptable, environmentally benign and cost-effective. An attempt has been made to review the different approaches used in sustainable weed control options, in this paper.