Weed Management in Oilseed Crops - A Review

Abstract

Oilseed crops are slow growing during the initial growth period. In oilseeds, weeds caused yield reduction by 15-60 percent. Hence it is very essential to control weeds during the critical period of crop-weed competition. Weed management options in the majority of oilseed crops are limited, therefore, adoptions of multiple options of weed management using ‘little hammers’ considering preventive, cultural, mechanical, chemical, and biotechnological approaches are important. Integrated weed management (IWM) is a system approach to minimize weed populations below the economic threshold level. Among different weed management practices, cultural practices minimized the crop-weed competition up to large extent. Further, mechanical measures and herbicidal weed management are ‘large hammers’ or single large methods of weed control, but that may lead to the development of another level of problems like shift in weed flora, development of difficult-to-control weeds, issues of herbicide resistance, establishment of perennial weeds, etc. Thus, the aforesaid problems can be overcome by suitably adopting IWM, since it mixes the use of different available weed control methods in a balanced way by managing the weeds effectively, and sustainably provides higher production without harming the environment.