New Natural Herbicide Candidate for Sicyon angulatus Control

Abstract

Most synthetic herbicides are used for controlling troublesome weed species in modern agriculture all over the world. However, consecutive use of the same herbicide brings about resistant weed problems and many countries are restricting repeated treatment in agricultural lands [1]. For these and environmental reasons, new herbicide discovery and subsequent registration is very challenging. Recently, evaluating natural products of ani‐ mals, plants, microorganisms and minerals for developing environmental friendly herbi‐ cides has increased [2]. Several compounds have been developed or in development as natural herbicides such as bialaphos [3], methoxyhygromycin (MHM) [4], and pelargonic acid [5]. Essential oils such as clove oil and cinnamon oil also contain allelochemicals that control a broad spectrum of weeds and can be used as natural herbicide source [6,7]. Plumbagin isolated from Drosophyllum lusitanicum and Plumbago auriculata inhibited the seed germination of lettuce and wheat [8,9]. Several classes of natural compounds in‐ cluding triketones, benzoquinones, naphthoquinones and anthraquinones have been re‐ ported as hydroxyphenylpyruvate dioxygenase (HPPD) inhibitors and hence the novel classes of HPPD inhibitors could be developed based on their structural backbones [10].